


Spinning a Changed Legend

by Silvex



Series: Labyrinths of Life [3]
Category: Etrian Odyssey Series, Persona Series, 世界樹の迷宮V 長き神話の果て | Etrian Odyssey V: Beyond the Myth
Genre: Bad Cooking, Exploration, Gen, Homesickness, Psychological Trauma, Secrets, Slice of Life, Sort Of, Spoilers, Team Fluff, there's a plot to this i swear
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-19
Updated: 2019-08-01
Packaged: 2019-08-04 13:10:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 22
Words: 39,047
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16347341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silvex/pseuds/Silvex
Summary: If the people of Arcania knew what a train wreck was, they would likely describe the Guild that recently popped up as one. The ragtag group of teenagers isn't exactly trying to disagree, either. But they don't actually have any better ideas. Much to their supreme irritation.Powers or not, though, Yggdrasil is not a place to let your guard down. And they feel obligated to at least make the attempt.This is probably destined to end horribly.





	1. New Faces

One would think that a group of teenagers would have better things to do than try to find a town based solely off of the location of a tree, even in Arcania. One would be very wrong. Of course, this wasn’t exactly your normal group of teenagers.

They were dressed similarly- the boys and the redheaded girl wore black jackets, the other two girls wore cardigans- the black-haired girl red, the blonde yellow. Not exactly a normal fashion statement, not that they seemed to notice or care.

They also carried weapons, for the most part. The redhead, who seemed to be the leader, despite being at about the middle in terms of age, used her naginata as a walking stick, much to the annoyance of her four friends, the older girl twirling her fan in her hands. One of the boys, the one with silver hair and eyes, reached into his bag and handed her a plastic water bottle.

“Careful,” He warned her. “There’s not a lot left, and we’ll need to wait for a river or town to refill it.”

“I don’t think we need to worry about that, actually,” The red-haired girl told them. “The tree’s big, but that means that the base is even bigger, and that’s where Iorys is. So we should get there by the end of the day.”

“Whatever you say, Yuki-senpai.”

“I already told you, Vice Leader, your body is older than mine now, so it’s just Hamuko. And you could sound a bit more enthusiastic- just think about what we can find in Yggdrasil!”

“Monsters, mayhem, and near-death experiences?” The boy shot back.

“I was thinking more along the lines of treasure…” Hamuko admitted. “And the fact that, if we keep Yukiko busy healing us, she won’t have time to cook.”

“She’s not that bad…”

“Souji-kun, are you saying that because you mean it, or are you saying it because you’re her boyfriend?” The boy fell silent. “I thought so.”

“I’m not sure that’s how a healthy relationship works…” The youngest-looking of the three girls started, before reaching for one of the bags. The final member of the group, a boy with dark skin, grabbed her wrist and shook his head.

“Rei, we still need the food,” He reminded her. She sighed and hung her head.

“Right, sorry, Zen…”

“Come on, guys, let’s look on the bright side!” Hamuko insisted. “We’re nearly there, and if Yggdrasil has half of the things that guy said it had, we’ll be set for life!”

“However long that is,” Souji finished. He took the water bottle back from Yukiko, who had finally finished. “Given your track record…”

“Hey, my team only lost two people! ...And sort of Junpei’s girlfriend, but still!”

“Weren’t you one of them?”

“...Point taken.” She shoved the hand that wasn’t carrying her spear into her pocket. “But this is a new day! A new adventure! We can do this!”

If the looks on her friends’ faces was anything to go by, they weren’t exactly filled with confidence.

* * *

  
  


“So many of the local explorers are content to settle for mediocrity.” The five teens exchanged glances, none of them looking entirely sure how they had managed to land themselves in this situation.

“Honestly, I just want to see how high we can get without dying,” Hamuko admitted. “And maybe look for a few things in particular, but… somehow, I don’t think we’ll be finding those very easily, if at all.”

“I’m here because Rei wanted to see the tree,” Zen said. “And because you think there could be something interesting here.”

“I’m here because Souji-kun thinks it’s a good idea,” Yukiko stated. “Also because these are all the people that I know.”

Egar stared at them for a few moments. “...Right. You’re a bunch of kids.”

“That’s…” Rei paused, as though trying to come up with the right words. “...debatable.”

“We do honestly want to explore the Labyrinth, though,” Yukiko told him. “We’re just not the most sensible about it.”

“Well, it is open to all explorers…” He sighed. “I’m probably really going to regret this later, but very well. We will need a name for your Guild, though.”

That brought the five of them up short. “Right… we should have thought of something earlier…” Souji paused. “I’d put in my vote for Fool’s Guild, but in three-fifths of our cases, that’d just be insulting.”

“It should probably be something that fits us,” Rei noted. “Maybe all of our favorite foods?”

Hamuko groaned. “That would only work as an acronym, and I don’t think we’d make any sensible words. I was thinking something more to do with… well… you know…” She gestured at herself, Souji, and Yukiko.

“I wouldn’t have any objections to that,” Zen agreed. “Did you have any ideas in particular?”

“...Yeah. Masks. We should be the Masked Guild.” And that was that.

* * *

  
  


The process of becoming recognized explorers in Arcania was a three-part process. First, the prospective Guild needed to obtain a more or less complete map of the explored areas of Yggdrasil’s first floor. This was actually the simplest part- various groups were more than happy to assist each other. The other two were more tricky, as they required going deep into the Labyrinth. It was infested with creatures that didn’t like the various people who intruded on their ecosystem, and that reacted violently.

Not that it mattered to the group at the moment, what with how low the sun was in the sky. “We can set out for Yggdrasil tomorrow,” Hamuko decided. “It’s not like we have an actual deadline, after all.”

“You mean, beyond ‘when the money runs out’?” Souji quipped. Behind him, Rei and Yukiko burst out laughing- Yukiko a good bit more so than Rei.

“I’m sorry I never needed to learn how to budget. Some of us used to get actual financial support, you know!”

“I do not entirely understand the idea of a ‘budget’, either,” Zen admitted. “But it seems like something important to learn.”

“Oh, look, we’re at the inn!” Hamuko commented, pointedly not looking at her friends. “Three rooms sound good? I get the third one, the rest of you can divide them however you like.”

“You’re the leader,” Yukiko shrugged, before glancing at Souji. “You should have picked rock.”

“I know…” Still, they followed their errant leader inside.

The inn was a nice place. Cozy, despite the large size required by a building able to host a whole city worth of adventurers. A perfect place for a quiet life, though the lives of those staying there had to be anything but.

“Ah! Welcome!” They looked up to see a young woman with rabbit ears stumble out of a backroom. “I didn’t expect you to come in, most show up either in the early morning or late at night… well, besides the ones that sleep for weeks on end, anyway.”

None of them responded. The woman shrugged, and continued on as if nothing had happened.

“Either way, my name’s Jenetta, and this is my inn. If you plan on exploring Yggdrasil, we’re probably going to be seeing a lot of each other, so I hope you find it to your liking.”

“It seems very comfortable,” Yukiko noted. “It- it feels like home.” Souji moved to stand closer to her upon hearing this, though Jenetta didn’t seem to really notice.

“I’m glad to hear you say that! And I’m sure you’ll enjoy it even more once you’ve been here for a while!”

They could only hope so.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, this started because I realized my 3DS memory card was running out of space, and decided to completely fill it with DLC. I noticed that one of the schoolgirl portraits looked to be wearing the Yasogami High uniform. And I had just enough space for another save file, so I ran with it.  
> Said portrait is used by my in-game Yukiko, who is a warlock. Souji and Zen use the schoolboy portraits, Hamuko is mediko, and Rei... actually has a portrait from the base game, because she just didn't look right as a gunner, especially when her in-game class is botanist.  
> And then I realized I could put a plot to all of this. I'm probably going to regret this eventually, but the game has enough events for each floor to give about four or five chapters worth of material, so it's not like I'm in any danger of falling behind in-game.  
> Mostly, though, this is an experiment with complete third-person: More specifically, for how long I can pull it off. Let's see how it goes.  
> Yes, there is an actual plot. Sort-of. It's still a work in progress.


	2. Into the Verdant Woodlands

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Souji obtains a new rival.
> 
> Hamuko begins to question her life choices.

The next morning, the Masked Guild started the day by meeting up at one of the tables in the inn for breakfast. The girls sat on the northern side of the table, the boys to the south. They ate slowly, for the most part, except for Rei, who was eating as much as she could, as quickly as she could.

“This isn’t quite as good as your cooking, Souji-kun,” Yukiko commented. “But I may be a little biased.”

“No, Souji-kun’s cooking’s great,” Hamuko shrugged. “Maybe not the best I’ve ever eaten, but I’ve eaten a lot of things. This stuff’s fine.”

“Rei, do you need more water?” Zen asked.

“‘m fine…” She mumbled around a mouthful of rice.

Souji sighed. “Rei… you remember you can actually choke, right?”

“...I knew that.”

“I don’t think you did.” The conversation was interrupted by one of the inn’s many, many cats jumping up on the bench next to Zen.

“There’s an animal here…”

“It probably wants you to pet it,” Hamuko suggested. “I think… honestly, I’m more of a dog person.”

Souji shot Hamuko a look of mock betrayal. “I hope you realize this means we can no longer be friends.”

“Hey, you’ve met Koro-chan. Can you blame me?” She puffed out her cheeks, before the two of them were burst into laughter.

Zen kept staring at the cat, as though unsure as to what to do with it. Eventually, he reached out to stroke it, and spent the next few moments petting it awkwardly.

This ended, of course, with the cat stealing the rest of Zen’s breakfast, much to everyone else’s amusement. “Don’t worry, Zen,” Souji said with a slight smile. “I’m sure there’s something edible in the Labyrinth.”

“He’s always going to be taking the cat’s side…” Yukiko sighed. Hamuko shrugged.

“To be fair, if Koro-chan did something like that… I’d defend him, too. Except, you know, Koro-chan was actually my dog. This is just a random cat.”

“That’s Souji-kun for you. I think he was feeding all the strays in Inaba for a while.”

“Somehow, that does not surprise me.”

* * *

  
  


After breakfast was done, the five of them headed straight for the Labyrinth. Hamuko was asking questions as they went, making sure they had everything.

“Zen-kun, you’ve got the map paper, right?”

“Yes.” Zen held up the sheets in question, before slipping them back into his pockets.

“Good. Rei-chan, does your bag have enough medicine?”

“I’ve got Medica, Amrita, bandages, some Soma left over from the culture festival… yeah, I think we’re good!”

“Are you sure you have everything, Yuki-senpai?” Souji asked.

“I have my naginata, my Evoker, and the clothes on my back,” She replied. “Let’s save checking on possessions for people who actually have possessions. And I told you, it’s just Hamuko. Unless you’d rather be called Vice Leader?”

“...I’d rather not.”

“You think they’ll ever stop having this conversation?” Rei asked. Zen shrugged.

“We’ve been here for five of this planet’s months, and they have been like this every day. Why should that fact change?”

“Maybe they’ll stop enjoying it?” She suggested. The two of them glanced over to where Souji and Hamuko were still bickering. “One day?”

“I think they’re trying to make up for not having access to Junpei-san and Yosuke-kun,” Yukiko mused. “But they can’t come up with enough bad ideas to be an effective substitute.”

Zen and Rei both turned to face her, before Zen stated, “That makes a surprising amount of sense, and is utterly terrifying.”

“Yeah, Yukiko-chan, where’s your faith in me?” Hamuko called back. “I can totally come up with bad ideas, I just don’t usually act on them because I’m not Junpei!”

“I… don’t think that’s something to be proud of,” Souji pointed out. “And… usually?” Hamuko suddenly found the insides of her sleeves to be very interesting.

“Well, I don’t really regret it or anything… but suffice to say, I have made choices that I knew from the start would only end in disaster. And that’s all I have to say on the matter.”

Rei tilted her head to the side. “Does this have anything to do with-”

“Rei-chan, we agreed never to speak about that again, remember?” Rei paused and stopped walking for a moment, to avoid being too close to the girl who was putting off an aura of death.

Yukiko lingered behind for a bit as well, before leaning over to her friend and whispering, “Well, she didn’t say no.”

* * *

  
  


For such a large, majestic-seeming tree, containing an expanse of land that reached up to the heavens, the entrance to the Yggdrasil Labyrinth was surprisingly unassuming. Just a hole in the bark of the tree, and an overgrown set of stone steps leading upwards.

Upon reaching this area, the Masked Guild paused for a moment. “That’s… a lot of stairs,” Rei commented.

Hamuko shrugged. “Think of it like this: It’s a good workout. Between tennis and Tartarus, I didn’t have to worry about my weight at all that year.”

“It will be nice to have a place to exercise that won’t innately poke at my friends’ personal issues,” Souji agreed. “So, do you think we’re ready for this?”

“I have yet to see how we have an actual choice,” She responded. “Zen-kun, Rei-chan, Yukiko-chan, if you think you’re missing anything, this is your last chance.”

“I will be fine.”

“I told you we had everything already!”

“I have my fan, and that’s just about all I need. We’re not going in all that deep today, right?”

“The plan is to scout around the entrance, yes,” Hamuko confirmed. “But I need to make sure we have everything, the times when I didn’t double-check before always ended up being the most painful.”

Souji sighed. “How is it that you can be so sensible about things like that… but you still don’t know how to budget?”

“Hey, Yukiko-chan? What’s Izanagi’s weakness again?”

* * *

  
  


Yukiko did not end up reminding Hamuko of Souji’s weakness, and the five of them reached the top of the stairs in perfect condition.

The Labyrinth was… well, it was beautiful. The ground was covered in lush green grass, they could hear the rush of water, and the sky above them was perfectly clear. The group was surrounded by trees, with the stairs that they had emerged from being concealed by a particularly tangled copse.

“Wow!” Rei shouted, running out into the middle of the forest clearing. “This is amazing!”

“Rei, be careful,” Zen reminded her. “We have no idea what could be in these woods.”

“We know there’s no deer,” Yukiko pointed out. “Otherwise, venison would be a lot less expensive.”

They all stared at her. “I’m not sure why you were looking at the price of venison in this town…” Souji began, “But I don’t think I want to know. Yuki-senpai, if she tries to feed us, know there is nothing I can do to stop her.”

“Understood, Vice Leader. Maybe one day we’ll be able to teach her to make something edible. Fuuka-chan eventually managed, after all.”

“What does eventually mean in this situation?” Zen asked.

“Well, Fuuka-chan’s food was consistently edible by mid-January… how long have you been working on Yukiko?”

“Since a month after we met. And the day before we came here, she put the entire team in the hospital from food poisoning.”

“....Give me about ten months. Should be long enough to beat something into her, even if it just ends up being a kitchen ban.”

“She’s standing right here, you know-” Souji cut off, and glanced around. “Zen, do you know where our girlfriends went?”

“There is a guard post near here. We should go ask if they’ve passed through there.”

Hamuko sighed. “Of course. We take our eyes off of them for less than a minute… I don’t even know why that surprises me anymore. Vice Leader, don’t you have a sensory Persona?”

“Kaguya? Yeah… Should probably go somewhere not on the path to call her, though,” He pointed out, gesturing to the stairs. “And that… doesn’t seem wise.”

There was a flare of fire from elsewhere in the nearby forest. “Or we could just follow the trail of destruction from Sumeo-Okami.”

“Or we could do that,” Hamuko agreed. “Zen-kun, make sure nothing tries to sneak up on us from behind, okay?”

* * *

  
  


“So, how’d it go?” Souji asked. Hamuko sighed.

“Well, I convinced the guard that our Personas were not demonic creatures sent to murder his chickens. And got basic directions to the best places for our root and soil samples. I’m not sure which of these were more important.”

Yukiko shrugged. “If I didn’t use Sumeo, one of you would have brought out yours eventually.”

“Probably not against a bunch of acorns,” Souji pointed out, gesturing at the charred bodies that surrounded them.

“There were vines, too,” Rei said. “But those were a bit…”

“Completely immolated?” Hamuko suggested.

“Yeah, that.”

“Leader, you said that you knew where we should go next,” Zen stated.

“Right. Well, we’re supposed to head north until we reach the river crossing, and then we go east. Roughly. We should probably focus on filling out the map for now- that’ll take longer.”

“Understood. Will we still be heading in that direction?”

“I don’t have any better ideas.” That made clear, the group of five set out along the river.

* * *

  
  


Eventually, the Guild stopped when something caught Yukiko’s eye. “Oh? What’s that?” She asked, turning to face the river. Close to the shore, a turtle lay sunbathing on a rock, next to an oddly shiny object.

“It looks like a coin,” Zen noted.

“Zen’s right,” Souji said. “It’s the right shape and color, at least. Do you want it?” He asked his girlfriend.

“That would be nice. We don’t really have enough money to divide it right now.”

Hamuko groaned. “Why am I friends with you people?”

“Because we’re stuck here together?” Rei suggested.

“Yeah, that’s… that’s probably it. Thanks, Rei-chan.”

“You’re welcome!”

Meanwhile, Souji crouched down in front of the rock. He breathed in, out, readied himself… and flashed his hand forward, only to have his fingers chomped on by a very annoyed turtle. Wincing, he pulled his bloodied hand back, inspecting it carefully. After a few moments, he shrugged and tried again, with the same results.

“He’s coming out of this with broken fingers, isn’t he?” Rei commented.

Hamuko nodded. “Looks like it.”

Zen sighed, waded out into the river, and picked up the turtle, setting it down gently on another rock. “Do we really have the time for this?”

“I’m sure I would have gotten past him eventually!” Souji protested, before picking up the coin and handing it to Yukiko. “Here you go.”

“Oh, thank you, Souji-kun. Do you need-?”

“I can handle it myself,” He stated. “Rei, could you pass me some bandages?”

“...You know, I only do that because I heal really quickly,” Hamuko pointed out. “And because it would look strange if none of us seemed injured coming out of a fight. We weren’t even fighting.”

“That’s arguable,” Souji stated, before looking over at the rock that the turtle was now lying on. “He was a worthy opponent.”

“...All in favor of heading back to Iorys and pretending that the past five minutes never happened?”

“Why?” Yukiko asked.

“I know I should have realized this long ago… but it just occurred to me that this is my life now. At least I never had to stay in Tartarus for more than an hour.”

“In that case, agreed.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That turtle is my favorite character. You can fight me on this. He just does not give a fuck about anything.


	3. Forest of Foes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The dangers of the Labyrinth start to reveal themselves... and get promptly shut down. To the surprise of absolutely no one. Hamuko proves herself to be surprisingly responsible.

Near the beginning of the Yggdrasil Labyrinth, five teenagers stood at the start of a slick and muddy side path. They eyed the glittery bottle at the end of it hungrily, yet shifted uncertainly. Finally, Hamuko looked up, the sunlight capturing the look of determination in her ruby-colored eyes.

“I’m going for it!” She declared, charging straight forward, her friends following at a (slightly) more sedate pace. It worked for about five seconds.

At the sixth second, Hamuko slipped and fell, barely catching herself using her naginata. Zen, who was right behind her, wasn’t so lucky, tripping over her extended foot and sliding into the muck. The other three barely managed to stop themselves in time.

“Whoa!” Hamuko gasped, straightening herself up. “That’ll teach me not to watch where I’m going!”

“Zen, are you okay?” Rei asked.

“I’m fine,” He replied, still making no move to stand, instead trying to wipe the mud off of his clothes. “I may require a change of clothes once we’re out of the Labyrinth, however.”

“Wherever we’re supposed to get that,” Souji sighed. “The local styles are… odd.”

“I don’t know,” Yukiko commented. “I think Rei would look pretty cute in them. And there are lab coats and stuff, too!”

“Those sound like things Yuki-senpai and I would force you guys to wear for kicks.” Souji rapidly found himself knocked into the mud with Zen.

“For your information, Vice Leader, I actually enjoy wearing those outfits,” Hamuko told him. “And I actually wouldn’t mind wearing a lab coat when waiting for my uniform to be cleaned. I could be a mad scientist!”

“Well, she’s already halfway there…” Souji mumbled. Next to him, Yukiko was starting to fall into one of her laughing fits. “Come on, it can’t be that funny.”

Not that Yukiko got the chance to defend herself, as that was about the point that a giant purple leech emerged from the mud.   
“So… you think it’ll poison us?” Rei asked, just before the leech struck, nearly hitting Yukiko were it not for Hamuko’s naginata proving an effective blocking tool.

“I love the reach on this thing…” The girl in black sighed, before knocking the leech away. It fell to the ground, lay dazed for a moment, and then pulled itself back up.

“It’s barely got a scratch…” Zen muttered. “Shall I try shooting it for better results?”

“If you know where to replace your ammunition, go ahead.” Zen sighed and put the crossbow back down. “Yeah, I didn’t think so.”

“Um… It’s a leech…” Rei’s voice was quiet, but she still made her suggestion. “Don’t they need to stay damp?”

“Yeah, good idea,” Hamuko nodded, pulling out a silver gun-shaped object. “Yukiko-chan, since you got the last ones, may I…?”

“If Souji-kun doesn’t want it.” They both turned to him, but he just shook his head. “Go ahead.”

“Got it!” With that, she pointed the gun to her head, pulling the trigger without hesitation. “Let’s go, Orpheus! Agidyne!” Behind her, a large female figure appeared in a burst of blue light, who played a sharp chord on the heart-shaped harp she carried, flames bursting into being around the leech.

Yukiko looked at Souji. “You know, sometimes I wonder why our Personas don’t come with musical accompaniment.”

“Because they aren’t mythological figures known for their musical accomplishments?” He suggested.

Eventually, the flames died away, leaving the leech a shriveled up husk. Rei tried to lift it, only for the skin to peel off. “It’s really stretchy…” She started tugging at it. “Do you think we could use this for something?”

Everyone else shrugged. “Well, one way to find out! Come on, let’s go!”

* * *

  
  


“Remind me again how we got into this mess,” Souji sighed, as they scavenged around the roots of the big tree.

“Cyrik said he could use the skin from the leech to commission a bow for Rei, but we didn’t have enough money. Zen wouldn’t take no for an answer,” Yukiko recited. “Leader decided this was a good idea, because we can pick up a root clipping on the way.”

“Right. When did this become my life, again?”

“According to you, when you shook a random person’s hand.”

“Got it. I was just wondering… how did that turn into this?”

“I keep asking myself that,” Hamuko commented, peering around a corner. “But, hey, at least you’ve never been responsible for almost causing the apocalypse! ...That we know of, anyway.”

“How can you be so cheerful about things like this?” Souji groaned.

“Helel. Best source of positivity you’ll ever find.” She twirled her Evoker in her hand for a moment, before slipping it back in its holster. “Anyway, we got the root we were looking for, so now we just need the soil samples.”

“And shiny stuff to exchange for a bow for Rei because Zen,” Yukiko added. Hamuko sighed.

“You know, for people that complain about my nonexistent budgeting skills, you could still try and spend less.”

“At least we’re not spending all our hard-earned cash on takoyaki,” Souji pointed out.

“One time!” Seemingly giving up on convincing her friends of her capability for financial responsibility, Hamuko turned away, fiddling with her left sleeve. “Anyway, I was here to tell you that Zen and Rei wandered off, and I need you to summon Kaguya.”

“I’m not Rise,” The silver-haired boy grumbled, but he still crushed the blue card that appeared in front of him, his summoned Persona appearing just overhead, wrapping her cape around her summoner. “They’re a bit north of here, and a little west, I think. I’ve never actually done this before…”

“Good enough. I wonder what they’re doing right now…”

* * *

  
  


Rei glanced first at the tattered and torn backpack on the ground, and then at said ground, covered in claw marks and bloodstains. “Zen, should we?”

“Nothing seems to be moving,” Her boyfriend responded. “But you should still be careful.”

“R-Right!” She then proceeded to run down the path, albeit making sure that she didn’t trip over anything.

She paused, for a moment, to examine the ragged cloth, before rifling through it to retrieve a shiny copper coin. “Got it!” She cheered.

However, her voice seemed to attract the attention of something in the bushes, which rustled, before parting to reveal a giant red-brown dog. Pushing herself up, she scrambled over to Zen, who proceeded to shoot the dog with something that exploded into shards of ice.

The dog slowed down, but didn’t stop, so Zen shot it again. It seemed to be doing something, but he didn’t stick around to find out exactly what- couldn’t, with Rei grabbing his hand and running like their lives depended on it. Which they probably did.

“They’re coming this way,” Souji’s voice stated, louder than it would have been if he were using any other Persona at the moment. “Something’s chasing them, it seems to be weak to ice. I’m switching to Black Frost now, because I’m not going to limit myself to scanning this whole time.” With that, the voice cut off again.

“Was Vice Leader using Kaguya?” Rei asked, her voice carrying a touch of surprise.

“It is his Persona,” Zen pointed out, completely calm despite the fact that they were currently running for their lives.

Of course, given that their friends appeared not even a minute later, Souji directing a black snowman that turned the dog into an ice block, before having said snowman provide a rush of flames to warm up Zen and Rei after they strayed a bit to close, his lack of panic seemed to be entirely justified.

Hamuko stood before the two of them now, looking far from happy. “You know,” She started. “I’m normally fine with letting my teammates do their own thing. We got jobs done faster that way. Of course, that was back in the days when we had Fuuka. And Souji-kun has stated, several times, that he doesn’t want to be reduced to just a scanner. Not that I’d do that to him. Good Wild Cards are hard to find.”

“Please stop trying to sound professional…” Souji groaned. “We all know it’s not like you, you can switch back at any point you like.”

“I’m just trying to impress on our friends the importance of proper communication. I don’t mind you going off on your own- I just ask that you actually tell us when you do. I’d like to be reasonable about this.”

“This seems surprisingly responsible for you,” Yukiko noted. “It’s not even paranoia this time.”

“You don’t get selected as a permanent field leader without having some actual ability,” She pointed out. “This is my team, you are all my responsibility, and we’re not going to get very far up Yggdrasil if you don’t realize that.”

“...Would you like Kaguya?” Souji offered. “It’d probably make you worry less…”

“I’m keeping Metatron, thanks.”

“It was worth a shot…”

“I know for a fact that Kaguya has combat skills, I’ve seen Fuuka use them,” Hamuko pointed out. “And why would you trade away Ultimate Personas? That’s like trading away, at minimum, a very close friend.”

“I am curious as to why you would think that,” Zen stated. “I do not see much difference between one Persona and another.”

Both Wild Cards blinked.

“Yuki-senpai, you’re the leader. You get to tell them about Social Links.”

“Vice Leader, your girlfriend is in this Guild. Shouldn’t it be you telling her these things?”

“And how am I supposed to explain magical friendship powers without making them sound terrible?”

“You could say you get powers because you like people?” They then noticed their three Guildmates staring at them. “We’ll finish this later. We need to get Rei her bow, I think we’ve got enough that we don’t have to start selling off our possessions.”

“That implies we have possessions worth selling.” Hamuko winced and adjusted her left sleeve.

“I’m sure someone would find hair accessories worth paying a lot for,” Yukiko spoke up, causing the Guild leader to let out a sigh of relief. “Not that it matters now, of course.”

“Of course not. Now, let’s go. It’s getting late.” And with that, the group of five turned to once again leave the forest, if only until the next day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...And this is why you never underestimate the combination of Elemancer and Chain Duelist, even if they haven't taken their titles yet. The leech died in two turns, no casualties. The dog did more damage, and it didn't even get a free shot! Because of this, Rei is now the most offensively powerful character in my party- again, she's a Botanist.  
>  Souji's Kaguya is based off of the version in PQ, which makes an excellent support Persona. He keeps it around because one, not having Velvet Room access means he can't replace Personas, and two, he's scared of what Marie would do to him if he did.  
> Hamuko's possessions: The things she had on her when she died, and the naginata she bought upon arriving on Mars. That's it. (And can I just mention how much I love the fact that this game takes place on Mars?)


	4. Thank You Berry Much!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> While exploring the Labyrinth, the group comes across a very tasty find...

The Yggdrasil Labyrinth, no matter how much danger lay in its branches, generally gave off an air of calm and quiet. Monsters aside, it really was that peaceful of a place, most of the time. One just had to know how to avoid the overly-aggressive denizens, the worst of which were all blocked off, and the first few floors really would be just as safe as they seemed.

The Masked Guild did not seem to be that good at avoiding the overly-aggressive denizens of Yggdrasil. Rei backed up, reaching for an arrow in her quiver.

It was nearly empty. They’d found the location of the soil samples, but Hamuko’s digging had disturbed a rather large number of acorns, a number of which had run off with her arrows stuck in them and gotten incinerated by Sumeo-Okami.

“Yukiko, could you please tone it down?” Souji asked. “Zen has limited ammunition, and arrows still cost money.”

“Right.” It was only a Maragi spell, this time. The newest row of acorns still ended up on fire either way. One actually managed to avoid the blaze, only to be cut down by Izanagi.

“Okay, I’ve got it!” Hamuko called to the four that were fighting, holding up a bag full of dirt. Hopefully, it would be enough. The five had agreed that none of them wanted to fight any more of the early-Stratum enemies than they had to. It just wasn’t dignified.

Not that Hamuko seemed to care much for the matter of dignity, but the point remained.

“So all we need now is to complete the map,” Zen remarked. “And I believe there is just one path we have yet to follow.”

“So, we’ll be able to move onto higher floors soon?” Rei asked, retrieving the few salvageable arrows that weren’t stuck in one acorn or other.

“Tomorrow, if we’re fast enough,” Hamuko replied, squinting up at the sun. “It’d be… early afternoon now, wouldn’t it?”

Yukiko shrugged. “It’s about lunchtime either way, though we didn’t bring anything.”

“Hey, if you have a source of money for food that you’re not telling anyone about…” But Hamuko’s tone was still light and the Guild still continued through the forest.

* * *

  
  


About half an hour later, they entered an area full of berry bushes. Clumped together, there were two different kinds- a pale blue berry that appeared all over the bushes, and a much more heavily picked deep red kind. But even the red berries were highly numerous, as it was a very thick grove.

Rei reached for a clump of the blue berries, only for Zen to stop her. “I remember someone talking about these earlier. They are apparently a poisonous kind. If you’re hungry, eat the red ones.” She nodded, moving to get her snack from another bush.

“Hey,” Hamuko started, examining the berries, “If we gathered enough of these, do you think we could make jam or something?”

“Jam?” Souji turned to her. “With the number in this clearing, I could probably bake them into some actual pastries. I’d need a few more ingredients, but it’s not like this place doesn’t have anything worth selling.”

“Oh, you should do that, Souji-kun,” Yukiko told him. “We could eat them to celebrate becoming proper explorers!”

“If you say so… Yuki-senpai, do we have enough room in the bags?”

“You may have to sort them in with the medicine,” Hamuko admitted. “Actually, Rei-chan, do you still have the empty Nectar bottles we found earlier? Or any of the Medica jars we used?”

“Right here!” Rei immediately produced the objects in question. “I thought we could use them for something.”

“And we can, good job. Try and gather all the red berries you can, if we gather too much, we can snack on them later or sell them to somebody else.” Plan made, the five of them scattered across the grove.

For the most part, said plan was adhered to. Being around noon, there was a fair amount of munching on the berries that they were trying to gather, though that was only to be expected. And while Souji and Hamuko were always careful, and Zen was always looking out for Rei, Yukiko didn’t pay much notice when there were two bushes growing close enough together to tangle, that clumps of blue would be mixed in with the red.

Not that anyone saw it, because there was nothing but red berries in the jar that she carried. She’d just reached into the bush for another snack, and that was where her minimal food-based luck ran out.

And nobody noticed that there was a problem until she collapsed an hour later, her face unusually pale for someone that now spent nearly all of her time out in the sun.

“Zen, Rei, please tell me you know how to handle this,” Souji stated, already helping her to stand up again.

Neither of them answered.

* * *

  
  


“You should probably put Kohryu away.” Souji glanced away from Yukiko’s bed in the town clinic to see Hamuko standing at the door. “We’re low on money as it is, I don’t want to risk you accidentally channeling his powers and making us pay for property damage.”

“Is that normally a problem?” He asked, though the way he held himself adjusted, ever so slightly.

“It’s happened, sometimes,” She stated, walking over to stand next to him. “You never wanted to be around Akihiko when he was upset- everything started to smell like ozone after a few minutes, assuming he didn’t break something first, like the entire dorm’s wiring. And I don’t think I need to mention Mitsuru-senpai, though that was always on purpose.” She sighed, shaking her head. “What’s the point I’m trying to get to here…? Oh, right. You should try not to worry so much, because it’s either going to turn out okay or it won’t, and stressing yourself out isn’t going to fix anything.”

“Easy for you to say…” He muttered. “I’ve been in this position before. As far as I’m aware, you haven’t.”

Hamuko didn’t say anything, instead pulling her left sleeve down a little. Had anyone been looking closely enough, they might have seen her flinch, just a bit.

Souji shook his head. “Sorry. That was… that was out of line, wasn’t it? If what you’ve told me about that first time you summoned is true… then you know what it’s like to be on the other side.”

“...Yeah.” She nodded, eventually, after about a minute. “I’m going back to the inn. Are you going to be there tonight, or can we just pay for two rooms tonight?”

“It’s fine.” Hamuko turned and left the room, leaving just Souji to sit there.

“It’s not going to happen again…” He muttered to himself. “She’s not a kid, she’ll be fine, calm down…”

He sighed, and shook his head. “It’s not that easy.”

* * *

  
  


Yukiko was released from the clinic two days later, after the doctors had made sure that everything was out of her system. She was still a bit pale, but that was probably due to staying indoors for the past few days.

“We’re still staying at the inn?” She asked, as she and Souji walked down the road together. “I thought the money would have run out by now.”

“It should have,” Souji admitted. “But Zen and Rei have been scavenging around the Labyrinth’s first floor, apparently. I’m not sure what Yuki-senpai’s been doing, though- we haven’t exactly been speaking recently.”

“Leader’s probably been helping the others,” She said. “That’s what she does, after all.”

“Tries to, anyway.” He stuck the hand that Yukiko wasn’t holding in his pocket. “She can’t fix everything, or we wouldn’t be in this mess to begin with.”

“You know you can’t blame her for this. There was literally nothing she could do.”

Souji sighed. “Yeah, I know.” A cat walked along up the street. “Oh, look-”

Yukiko shook her head fondly, not letting him wander off. “Between you and Jenetta, the inn will have every cat in Iorys one day.”

“Not if you don’t let me go to them…” He mumbled. “Besides, those cats just like our cooking, it feels like.”

“Souji, everyone likes your cooking. Zen and Rei don’t know how, I’m still learning, Hamuko-san’s decent, but you’re incredible.”

“Still learning, huh?”

“I’ll get there eventually!” She insisted. Souji gave a small laugh.

“I’m not doubting that. If you haven’t given up by now, I don’t think you ever will. Just please stop feeding us things if they come out the wrong color, I think that’s generally the deadliest stuff.” Yukiko nodded.

“Right. I can do that. Say, did you ever make those pastries?”

“You still remember that? ...No, I just… didn’t feel like it. And the others have the supply bags anyway… and the money, however little there is… so I couldn’t even if I wanted to.”

“We’re part of the same Guild, it’s sort of important that you talk to them.”

“...When did you become the voice of reason?”

“About the same time you started thinking too hard about everything.”

“That- I’m not sure what to say to that.”

“Then don’t.” So he didn’t.

* * *

  
  


Souji and Yukiko both entered the eating area of the inn, not really expecting to find anything. Let alone the table that their group normally sat at, covered in plates of small pastries. Jenetta and Hamuko came over from the kitchen area, both of them carrying another plate.

“You’re back,” Zen greeted them. “I take it you are feeling better?”

“Yes, much. Did you make these, Jenetta?” The rabbit-eared woman shook her head.

“It was Leader!” Rei explained. “I don’t know how good they are, though… we weren’t allowed to try them until you came back.”

“I told you, they’re to celebrate Yukiko getting better,” Hamuko pointed out. “We can’t do that when Yukiko’s not here. Oh, hey, Yukiko-chan, Souji-kun. What do you think?”

Souji picked up a tiny cake and bit into it. “This is… amazing. Much better than usual, from you.”

“What’s that supposed to mean!?” She huffed.

Yukiko was quick to recover the situation. “We just expect the things you make to be edible, that’s all. There didn’t seem to be anything you were particularly good or bad at.”

“Well…” Hamuko glanced to the side, not really meeting anyone’s eyes. “I might have spent all my time keeping Fuuka-chan from poisoning everyone, but I was still in the school cooking club. It’s hard not to pick up a few things here and there.”

“Just a set of incredible pastries. Using a berry we’ve never seen before,” Souji stated, sounding fairly unconvinced.

“You should have seen her earlier,” Jenetta commented. “She was baking like a woman possessed, with that incredible focus.”

“I’m not that good…” She mumbled, her face starting to match her eyes and hair as she fiddled with her sleeves. “It barely even feels like I did anything, really. I just wanted everyone to feel better, so…”

“So you decided to fix it,” Zen finished, reaching for a muffin. “That is more than a lot of people can say.”

“I guess so…” She sighed, taking her normal seat. “But you don’t need to make a big deal of it, really. I think the jam turned out better anyway.”

“Did we have enough berries for all this and jam?” Yukiko asked.

“After running a few errands so I could buy more? Yes.”

“...Wait. Are you saying that you finally learned how to budget… so you could make jam?”

“...Maybe?” For a moment, silence hung over the table.

Rei was the one to break it. “So… can we just eat now?”

“Yes!” Hamuko declared, jumping on the provided out and shoving plates at everybody, while somehow managing not to get any crumbs or anything on her clothes. “Do that! Please!”

So they did.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...and the story properly earns the 'Psychological Trauma' tag. Have fun trying to figure out who that applies to most- they've all got issues, they wouldn't be Persona characters without them.
> 
> ...Sorry, Yukiko. It was either you or Rei, and the characters of Souji and Hamuko play off of each other far too well. (Souji and Zen couldn't eat the berries because they are relatively sensible. Hamuko couldn't eat the berries because her subplot demanded it.)


	5. Fool's Day

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just an ordinary day in the lives of the Masked Guild... so much as anything that they do can be considered 'ordinary', anyway.

The next morning, Souji, Hamuko, and Rei were the first ones to the breakfast table. “Um… Leader? Vice Leader?” Rei asked, glancing away from their eyes. “Could you teach me how to cook?”

Immediately, Souji and Hamuko both went pale. “Rei, do you have any prior cooking experience?”

“Not exactly… but I want to make pastries like Leader did yesterday! Zen really liked them, and normally he doesn’t care about food!”

“So we might not be working with another Fuuka-chan…” Hamuko sighed in relief. “But… sorry, I can’t. At least, not today. I’ve got things to do, errands I promised to run… stuff.”

“And I told Yukiko I’d take her fishing,” Souji added. “In Yggdrasil. Because if anyplace is going to have fish like Inaba’s Guardians, it’s Yggdrasil.”

Rei sighed, disappointed. Hamuko quickly interjected.

“I could help if you waited a few days… oh, or you could ask Jenetta or one of her sisters. They do all the cooking for this place, so they have to be good at it.”

Rei nodded. “I’ll do that then!”

“Do what?” Zen asked, shooing away the cats that had gathered around the table. For whatever reason, the felines had taken to swarming the Masked Guild’s usual eating spot. Common consensus was that it was Souji’s fault for continually feeding and petting them.

“Um… nothing important. It’s a secret.” She immediately shoved a spoonful of rice in her mouth. “Can’t talk. Mouth full.”

“She says that like it’s ever stopped her before…” Souji sighed. “But she has the right idea. Let’s eat. Yukiko won’t mind if we start without her.”

Said girl came in about five minutes later, complaining about how the shower seemed to have decided that ‘temperature’ and ‘water pressure’ were yes-or-no questions.

“Yeah, I noticed that, too,” Hamuko shrugged. “I just picked a setting and changed Personas to match.”

Souji paused. “...Why did I never think of that? I even have Black Frost, I can just not care.”

“Well, to be fair, it only occurred to me the first time after Mitsuru-senpai turned the boys into icicles on our school trip.”

Breakfast conversation continued to follow that line of thought.

* * *

  
  


Eventually, most of the Masked Guild left the inn for the day. “Hey, Jenetta?” Rei asked, her voice quivering just a little.

“Oh, you’re Rei, right?” The woman asked. “What do you want?”

“Well, all my friends are busy, and I want to learn to cook… like Leader did yesterday. I want to make things like that.”

“Hmm…. well, I have to get through the rest of the morning rush, but the afternoons are normally pretty slow… I think I can make some time then, if that’s okay with you?”

“Yeah, that’ll work.” Rei nodded, a look of relief on her face. “I’ll just… figure out something to do until then.”

‘Something’ ended up being making sure all of the cats were accounted for- which wasn’t easy, since there were so many of them. But Rei was small enough to reach into a number of spaces, and soon the lobby was basically covered in a mass of fur.

* * *

  
  


In the Yggdrasil Labyrinth, a snapping turtle paddled about in the middle of a slowly-moving river. The air around was calm. Peaceful. Like nothing could disturb it.

The peace was disturbed by a small piece of a muffin landing in the middle of the river, right next to the turtle, who swam over and gulped it down. As soon as the first piece was gone, another one splashed in.

“Yuki-senpai’s not going to like you doing that, you know,” Souji stated as he and Yukiko walked past Zen with their fishing equipment. “Sweet things are her specialty, after all.”

“I am not feeding the turtle the entire muffin,” Zen replied, taking another bite of his snack before breaking off a third piece to throw into the river. “And Leader doesn’t seem to take that much pride in her cooking.”

“Hamuko-san has high standards,” Yukiko pointed out, turning back just for a moment. “When it comes to food, anyway. Don’t let him too close to your fingers!” As the two of them walked off, Souji very noticeably flinched.

Zen chuckled and leaned back with his muffin, breaking off a fourth piece for Souji’s turtle enemy. The footsteps of the two Persona Users faded away into the brush, and once again, all was still.

Until the piece of muffin hit the river, anyway.

* * *

  
  


Hamuko examined her reflection in a store window. “Do you think I should let my hair down?” She asked, to nobody in particular, the ponytail in question twisted around her finger. “No, right, that’d get in the way… maybe if I cut it short?”

There was, of course, no visible response, and the crowd kept on walking right past her. “Yeah, I don’t know why I asked, either.”

Shrugging, she turned and started down the street, glancing up at the sky. “I’m not sure why I keep doing this…” She muttered. “I can’t tell the time like this that well, that’s always been Zen’s thing…”

She stopped in the middle of the street, her hand moving to adjust her sleeves automatically. “...Right. Something to do later. Now, where’d I put that list…”

The list was a single sheet of paper, folded and wrinkled and written in the handwriting of someone who had far too much time on their hands for things like practicing writing. Purple ink pen, because she’d grabbed one from the shop at random and hadn’t thought twice about the price tag.

“Let’s see… new costumes, check. First aid kit refill, not that we need it when just about everyone can heal, check. Bread for when we go to the Labyrinth. I’m tempted to just take over the oven and see how this goes, but…” Hamuko sighed. “Bakery it is.”

* * *

  
  


“So, what recipe do you want to learn first?” Jenetta asked. Rei fumbled through a box of recipe cards, eventually pulling out one for a type of cake with nuts in it.

“Um… this one! But as cupcakes!”

“Nut cupcakes, huh? Right, I’ll get the ingredients, the mixing bowls are in that cabinet over there. The top one. Try not to open anything else- the cats will squeeze in anywhere, if you give them enough space, and we need to replace the hinges on everything.”

Rei nodded, crossing the kitchen as quickly as she could without tripping over a stray paw or tail- which wasn’t very fast at all. Jenetta’s cat-collecting had gotten out of hand a long time ago.

Reaching up, she grabbed for the cabinet she had been pointed to, trying not to touch anything else- just about everything was half-open already, and it was probably pointless to try and keep the cats out until that was fixed.

They were also not that well-organized, as half a dozen mixing bowls fell down on Rei’s head as soon as the door she’d reached for flung itself open.

She picked herself up, groaning as all but one of the bowls slipped off. “Wish Zen were here… then I could fix this…”

“Are you okay!?”

“I will be! So… what size bowl did you want?”

* * *

  
  


“Why do we need so much fish, anyway?” Yukiko asked, leaning back into Souji’s side, her long-abandoned fishing gear spread out on the ground nearby. Probably not all that safe, but as the creatures most likely to approach were vicious turtles and squirrels, no objections were raised.

“The cats,” Souji replied, reeling in another trout for the bucket. “And Yuki-senpai wants us to have a picnic at some point. We’ll need more than just bread and jam for that.”

“She’s not here, you don’t have to try and annoy her like that,” She pointed out, her fingers moving to make knots in the grass. “She just might make you scan if you keep that up.”

“No big loss. I’ll be scanning either way- this is a Labyrinth, Yukiko. What do you think is behind those doors?”

“Are you sure?”

“Well, they won’t be Shadows, but… vicious monsters larger than any human? What else but an FOE?” He sighed and cast out his line again. “Of course, these probably won’t be living playing cards that are weak to everything.”

“They were a bit underwhelming, weren’t they? I’m not sure why Leader’s group had so much trouble… maybe there were too many of them?”

“They also seemed more intent on arguing with each other than fighting the Shadows,” Souji pointed out. He sighed. “Not that it matters anymore. Could you pass me the bait you were using? I’m starting to run out.”

And that was about when he caught yet another fish.

* * *

  
  


Zen descended the stairs that led to the Yggdrasil Labyrinth, returning to the main town of Iorys with his hands in his pockets and not seeming to pay attention to much of anything.

“Oh, Zen!” He turned to see Hamuko run up to him, waving all the while. She slowed down once she reached him, easily keeping pace. “So, I’ve been meaning to ask you something for a while now…”

“What is it?”

“Well… Chronos is linear time, right?” She asked, and he nodded. “And back in Rei’s Labyrinth, there was a clock tower and stuff.”

“I still do not see your point.”

“Well…” She chewed on her lip for a moment, before continuing. “Clocks. Your powers. Tell me about them.”

“Do you mean the powers I once had, or the ones that I still retain?”

“The relevant one.”

“That would make sense, yes… Well, I can always tell what time it is, and clocks are… easy to work with. My own watch always tells perfect time, because I declared it to do so.”

“So... theoretically, if I wanted a clock from back home to tell this world’s time…”

“This does not sound theoretical. This sounds like you want me to modify your watch.”

“...Yeah…” Hamuko rolled up her left sleeve, before removing the timepiece in question. “You can do it, right? Because it really shouldn’t just be sitting there, but it’s too important to throw out.”

“Important in what way?” Zen asked, though he still took it and started poking around.

Hamuko sighed. “Zen-kun, we both know you don’t actually need to do that. And it was a gift.”

“So, sentimental value, then. But you keep it hidden away under your sleeve.”

“You’ve seen this world’s technology level. I’ve only seen three clocks since we arrived, and two of them are right here. Accurate to this planet or not… why take the risk?” She took her watch back from Zen, observing how the second hand ticked by just a bit more slowly. “It’s that late already? We should probably head back to the inn. I’m done with my errands for today, so…” She shrugged and replaced the object on her wrist, before again covering it up with her sleeve. “Come on, let’s go. I’m pretty sure Rei’s done with… whatever she was doing by now.”

“You don’t know?”

“I do, but if she’s not telling you, I don’t think she wants the rest of us to do so, either.”

* * *

  
  


As it was for every other adventurer in Iorys, Zen and Hamuko had already learned to be careful when opening the door to the inn, lest one of the several dozen cats Jenetta kept decide to try and make an escape.

“I think I’ll go to bed early tonight,” Hamuko decided, turning and striding towards the staircase. “Zen-kun, if you can, remind the others not to stay up too late- we’re going to the second floor tomorrow.”

“I understand. Are you sure you won’t be hungry later?”

“I was at the bakery today, bought some extra bread. It should be fine,” She told him, before climbing up the stairs and vanishing down the hallway.

Zen, too, turned and left, albeit with the intention of obtaining some sort of sustenance. Rei was waiting for him there, a plate of cupcakes in her hands.

“Um… I made these earlier… I’ve been trying to cook.”

At their normal table, Yukiko turned to Souji. “Please tell me I wasn’t like that.”

“No, her stuff doesn’t look toxic.”

“Souji-kun!”

“As the Seeker of Truth, I feel that it’s fairly important for me not to lie,” Souji stated, his face showing just the slightest hints of a grin.

Meanwhile, Zen was already halfway through his cupcake. “Do you like it?” Rei asked.

“It is… it’s good,” he admitted. “Especially for a first attempt.” If he glanced a bit towards Yukiko, well, she didn’t notice.

Rei didn’t, either, taking the compliment entirely at face value. “Oh, you do like it! That’s great!”

“Say, Zen-kun…” Yukiko started. “Did Hamuko-san not come back with you?”

“Leader decided to turn in for the night,” He told them. “She wants to get an early start tomorrow.”

“That does seem like a good idea,” Souji admitted. “But I’m not sure why she skipped dinner for it. Maybe it’s one of those things we shouldn’t ask about.”

“Leader does seem to have a lot of those.” And nothing more was said on the matter.

* * *

  
  


Meanwhile, in the room that she had obtained just for herself, Hamuko sat down on her bed with a piece of bread in hand, watching the moons outside her window. “They’re a lot nicer than the one back on Earth,” She stated idly. “Of course, the moon on Earth was technically trying to kill us, so that’s not exactly saying much.”

She paused for a moment to eat, not doing anything but staring at the night sky. “Of course, neither of them are my favorite, either… I’m rambling again, aren’t I? Sorry about that. But you know how it is. I just can’t keep my mouth shut.”

Her grip on the bread tightened, leaving marks in the soft crust, before she tore off a piece entirely, popping it into her mouth. Swallowing, Hamuko reached for a glass of water at her bedside table, taking a long sip.

“It’s funny, you know? I’ve been alive again for almost six months, but this still tastes just as good as when we first got here. I’m not going to charge right back into gluttony like Rei did, but… well… it’s nice.”

She paused for a moment, neither saying anything nor continuing her meal. “I guess I’ve just… I missed this. Even if it was just a couple years… but then, you’re worse off, aren’t you, Shinji? At least I have this much.” Her hands began to tremble, and she put her glass back on the table before she dropped or broke it. “Sorry… I know I said I wouldn’t cry…”

She stuffed her mouth with all of the remaining bread, chewing as slowly as she could. Once that was done, she took another drink, before curling up under her blankets.

“I- I should probably get some sleep now. Busy day tomorrow. I’m sure I’ll feel better in the morning. Good night.”

It was another hour before she was able to get to sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...I swear I did not mean for it to end up this depressing.
> 
>  
> 
> Floor one is complete, so now it's time to start the cycle over again: Play a floor, write out a summary divided into chapters, actually write said chapters. Because I actually have a process for this one.
> 
> ...I may or may not be doing research on Mars to make sure I get certain things right. Such as the extra half-hour in the day. For obvious reasons, Hamuko minds that a lot less than Souji and Yukiko do.


	6. Around the Campfire

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The group makes some good food, as well as a new friend.

“A fire pit?” The five members of the Masked Guild stood around the object in question, still full of firewood.

“Well, we were looking for someplace to eat lunch,” Hamuko pointed out, pulling out her Evoker. “Orpheus, a little help?” After the fire was lit, however, the Persona didn’t fade away.

“Um… Yuki-senpai?” Souji started. “Shouldn’t you be dismissing her by now?”

“No, no, she’s going to provide music as we cook,” The group’s leader declared, settling down on the ground. “Vice Leader, the fish?”

“Right here.” Soon the five of them were happily chatting and roasting fish to the sound of Orpheus’ harp.

Not that it lasted. “Um… Yukiko…” Souji began, glancing at his girlfriend apprehensively, “Is your fish on fire?”

Immediately, Yukiko found herself being relieved of her stick. “Hey- Hamuko-san!”

“It’s for your own good, really,” The redhead replied, Orpheus fading out of existence. “You don’t just- how are you so bad at this!?”

“...She broke Leader,” Rei gasped.

“What are you talking about?” Souji asked. “That’s definitely something Yuki-senpai would say, I remember the times she’d complain about her teammates.”

Fire put out, Hamuko and Yukiko both looked at the poor fish. It was almost completely black. “Right, well, most of this one’s clearly a lost cause,” Hamuko stated, peeling away the charred bits. “Some bits might be salvageable with the right seasoning, but we don’t have any of that, so… Vice Leader, the backup fish?”

Souji immediately produced another fish. “I’ll cook this one,” He stated. “Just in case. Rei, don’t eat that.”

“I wasn’t going to!” She complained.

“I actually believe her,” Zen said. “If only due to what happened the last time we saw something eat her cooking.”

“That wasn’t just me…” Yukiko sighed. “Yamagishi-senpai, Rise-chan, and Chie helped.”

“You still killed an FOE so hard it never came back.” Hamuko’s voice was completely flat. “Mitsuru was actually considering reproducing it for use as a chemical weapon.”

“And she hasn’t gotten any better,” Souji finished. “Actually, you might say it’s gotten worse- when she started, it at least wasn’t lethal.”

“Souji-kun!”

“Yukiko, I love you, but the world would probably be a better place if you’d just stay out of the kitchen. I’m sorry, but once you knock out a ghost and half of a deity…”

“I said I was sorry!”

“That’s not the point!”

“You’re still going to teach her to make something edible, right?” Zen asked, leaning over to Hamuko.

“We can try. We might even succeed. But we’ve got a long way to go.”

* * *

  
  


Fifteen minutes later, the topic had shifted away from Yukiko’s continuous failures in the kitchen and the fish were finally cooked to everyone’s standards, from Zen’s ‘edible’ to Souji’s ‘fantastic’.

Everything was peaceful, for the most part, until the silence was broken by an unfamiliar voice. “Oh, are you new explorers?” The girl was a few inches taller than Hamuko, and upon seeing the unusually bright blue of her eyes, both Hamuko and Yukiko turned to Souji, who shook his head.

“Yeah, we’re the Masked Guild,” Rei answered without thinking, pointing at everyone in turn. “I’m Rei, and that’s Zen, and there’s Vice Leader, Yukiko, and Leader.”

“I’m Souji, and our leader’s name is Hamuko,” Souji stated, slipping the glowing blue Aeon card behind his back where it vanished into nothingness. “It’s good to meet you. What’s your name?”

“I’m Lili. I’m a Necromancer!” The girl declared, looking far too cheerful to be saying something like that. “Well, that’s the class name, anyway. I can’t really raise the dead or anything.”

“Do a lot of people ask you that?” Zen questioned.

“Far too many. Like today, when that guard… well. It doesn’t matter.”

“Sounds like there’s a story here,” Hamuko remarked. “If you’re going to be hanging around our fire, you might as well tell it.”

Lili nodded, sitting down between Yukiko and Zen. “Okay, so there’s a lot of boars in this forest. Powerful, prone to recklessness, get stronger by eating acorns. Sure, there’s more powerful things further into the floor, but those are the big things that aren’t on the other side of a huge power gap.”

“Huge as in…” Yukiko started, apprehensively.

“Giant caterpillars that mow down anything that gets in their way.”

“R-right…”

“Anyway, there’s this one boar that wandered out of its normal ecosystem. Like, if a Venomous Leech were to somehow get below the fourth floor, only not quite as terrible because the people here are at least licenced.”

Souji and Hamuko exchanged glances. “Should we tell her…?”

“No, let’s not. It’s dead now, anyway.”

“Have you guys met that one guard on the first floor? The one with the chickens? Well, they wandered off, and the boar managed to get at them… it wasn’t pretty. So he issued a request to take it down, and here I am!”

“...You aren’t even wearing armor, though,” Hamuko pointed out.

“She seems to be fairly powerful,” Zen noted. “Perhaps she doesn’t feel she needs it.”

“Well, I’ve fought lots of boars before!” Lili stated. “That’s why I took this job- I know what I’m doing, well enough to not actually get in close enough to be hit!”

“That’s still bad form,” Hamuko said. “Proper armor can mean the difference between life and death. No matter how powerful you are, it can never hurt to take the extra five minutes out of your day to put it on.”

“You never complained when I went without armor back in-” Rei glanced at Lili, before cutting herself off.

“You didn’t have access to armor,” The leader replied. “Why get mad at you for something you couldn’t help? Lili, however, is a licenced explorer, and really should know better.”

“...Right…”

“Responsibility’s always been more Solor’s thing,” The girl admitted. “But I can’t really go back now, can I? Someone else will get the prize!”

“You don’t have to confront it directly, do you?” Yukiko asked. “You could set a trap or something, and not have to be right where it is.”

“That’s a good idea,” Souji agreed. “You can’t be hurt if it never attacks you, right?”

* * *

  
  


“Set a trap, you said,” Hamuko started, glancing at her companions and Lili. “You won’t be hurt, you said.”

Zen winced. “In hindsight, we were not prepared for it to break free of the pit.”

“It’s my fault, really,” Lili said. “I’m the one that asked you guys to help me, and everything.”

“I’m not even mad about that part,” The leader stated. “I’m annoyed that you didn’t think through your location. Why, when something gains power from eating acorns, would you set up under an oak tree?”

“We weren’t thinking about it?” Yukiko suggested.

“...I thought I was done with suicidal teammates. And Souji-kun, why didn’t you stop them?”

“I was trying to sort out the map. It’s not like any of us have prior cartography experience.”

“...Right. I think this is enough Labyrinth exploration for today.”

“Leader? Are you okay?” Rei asked.

“I’m fine. I just need a break from today. Lili, you can handle things from here, right? Right. Good.”

“...Yuki-senpai, please start using Helel again.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...Hamuko. Please listen to Souji. I want to write more fluff. Save the angst for the prequel, please.
> 
> I swear, every time I try to write FeMC, she always takes over the story, and not always in a good way. At least Rei's getting a few chapters of her own coming up. That'll help.
> 
> On a more humorous note, yes, they did bring extra fish in case of a Mystery Food X class incident. Given that this story takes Yukiko's P4A joke ending, the cookie incident, and Final Edition as canon, probably a good idea.


	7. That Single Step

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Exploration? Who cares? They want to have a picnic!

On the second floor of the Yggdrasil Labyrinth, the Masked Guild and their friend Lili stumbled upon a clearing full of berries. “Oh! Forest berries!” The Necromancer grinned.

“You know what they are?” Rei asked.

“Yes. They’re only native to the areas around Yggdrasil, which is why they’re so hard to find, but they’re the best for pastries and jam! You can juice them, too, but that’s a bit harder. Have you not seen them before?”

“We’ve eaten them before,” Zen said. “But we did not know what they were called then.”

“We’re also just about out of them,” Souji pointed out. “And I said I’d use them to make pastries, so…”

“Souji-kun, that was more than a week ago,” Yukiko reminded him. He shrugged.

“Yeah, but I still promised. And- and Teddie might have had a lot of problems, but he was right about this.”

“Teddie?”

“A friend from back home.” He shook his head, before glancing around the clearing. “Anyway, while I’m busy… Yuki-senpai, didn’t you say something about wanting to have a picnic?”

“I did say that,” Hamuko agreed. “You think this is a good place, though?”

“Just yesterday you cleaved a walking mushroom in two. I don’t think we have much to worry about on that front.”

“Fair point. Okay, groups of three, everyone. Lili, you’re with Vice Leader and Yukiko-chan.” Zen turned to her as the group split.

“Wouldn’t it have been better for her to go with me and Rei?”

She shook her head. “Best to get it out as soon as we can, really. Do it while nobody really takes notice of us, and it’ll make adjusting to the higher floors that much easier.”

“That does sound like a good idea.”

“That’s why you’re the leader, right?” Rei asked.

“...Honestly, Mitsuru-senpai first picked me because Akihiko was hurt and I was the only one who had actually summoned my Persona before. And I just kept doing it after, because I turned out to actually be good at it. Now, come on. The sooner we get the berries, the sooner we can set up for lunch. And later, we can enjoy Souji-kun’s cooking!”

“Yeah, that’ll be great! Come on, Zen, hurry up!”

* * *

  
  


“So, why does she call you Vice Leader, anyway?” Souji didn’t even turn to look at Lili, instead continuing to inspect a nearby clump of berries. “I can’t imagine a Guild this small needs something like that.”

“It’s a bit of an inside joke,” He agreed, taking an empty jar from Yukiko. “Before we came here, we had a lot of friends. She turned out to be a natural leader for one half of the group, I led the other, and her half was larger, so…” He shrugged. “It just happened, really.”

“Souji-kun would have been the leader if her group didn’t have Zen and Rei in it,” Yukiko noted. “Hamuko-san didn’t really want to deal with so many people at once, but… she was talked into it.”

“Something tells me there’s a story here.”

Souji nodded. “Yeah, but it’s a pretty long one that we don’t have time for today. I don’t even know how long it would take to tell the whole thing. I’m not very good at stories, anyway.”

Yukiko turned to him. “Really? But Nanako-chan says-”

“You really think that my little sister would think there’s anything I can’t do, especially after she learned about everything?”

“Well, no, but-” Yukiko cut off, glancing at the nearby bushes. “Do either of you hear anything?”

They paused. “It sounds like growling,” Lili commented. “Must be one of the wild dogs.”

“Oh, they’re weak to ice, aren’t they?”

“We never see them in the snow, if that’s what you mean!”

Souji sighed. “Well, so much for normalcy.”

“Souji-kun, we gave up on that a long time ago.”

“Even relative normalcy?” Yukiko glanced away at this. Souji turned in the direction that the growling was coming from. “Lili, I think I should warn you ahead of time that this is going to look strange.” Yukiko hadn’t used Sumeo-Okami against the boar, so this was the first time that their friend would be seeing a Persona.

“You’ve seen me summon wraiths, it can’t be that bad!”

“If you say so… Black Frost!”

* * *

  
  


“So… things like this are normal where you come from?” Souji nodded.

“I might not be the best to explain it, though. I usually delegated that to… to a friend of mine. And Yukiko never had to be the one explaining, thankfully.”

“I’m not sure why, but I think I should be offended by that.”

“I don’t mean it in a bad way!” He quickly affirmed. “You just take some getting used to. And if someone’s new, they generally don’t understand you yet. It’s not really that bad.”

“And you’re too blunt,” Yukiko retorted. “Just because you try not to lie, there’s really no reason to not break it to people gently.”

“Yes, but when have I ever done that? Well… that didn’t end with my almost dying, anyway.” He reached over and grabbed some more berries from a nearby tree. “Speaking of which, Yuki-senpai said she’d be giving you mandatory cooking lessons starting tomorrow at five.”

“...Morning or afternoon?”

“I didn’t ask.”

“But if things like this are normal where you’re from… where are you from?” Souji and Yukiko both winced at Lili’s words. There was silence for a moment, but eventually, Souji spoke again.

“Where were from, huh…? It’s nowhere near here, I can tell you that much. And you won’t see it on any map. It’s… far… and even if we knew how, we probably couldn’t get back. I don’t think there’s anything to even go back to anymore.”

“...Oh. Sorry…”

“You didn’t know. Come on, I think we’ve got enough to head back, now.”

* * *

  
  


Lunch itself passed by uneventfully, with the group enjoying a wide variety of food. “Wow, that was delicious!” Lili exclaimed.

“You should thank our chefs!” Rei declared, gesturing at Souji and Hamuko. Souji’s face remained impassive, while Hamuko steadfastly refused to look anyone directly in the eye.

“I didn’t really do anything…” She mumbled.

“You keep saying that,” Souji started, “But I’m not entirely sure what your definition of ‘doing something’ is.”

“Souji-kun…” Hamuko shook her head and changed the topic. “So, Lili, you’ve seen Souji-kun and Yukiko-chan’s Personas, right? Or… one of Souji-kun’s Personas?”

“She saw Black Frost.”

“Right. So, just one Persona. And it’s not even one of his true ones.”

“Izanagi doesn’t use ice, Yuki-senpai. Not everyone has access to-”

“I don’t,” She cut him off. “Not anymore, at least. Anyway, we should start cleaning up. Lili, will you be able to find your own way from here?”

“Yeah, I’ll be fine.”

“Good. And remember, most people aren’t supposed to know about Personas, so don’t say anything.”

“Not a problem!” With that, Lili ran off deeper into the forest, leaving the five of them to talk.

“Are you sure we can trust her?” Souji asked.

“Most likely.” She started picking things up and stashing them away. “Just be glad she didn’t ask about Zen-kun and Rei-chan. They’re a lot less easy to explain. Anyway, should we keep exploring today, or go back for pastries?”

“Pastries!” Rei cheered.

“Well, you heard her, Vice Leader.” Souji turned his gaze to Hamuko.

“You realize I probably have better things to do.”

“Like what?”

“...It’s one of those things I shouldn’t ask about, isn’t it?”

“Good! You’re learning!” The other three Guild members exchanged worried glances.

“At least she seems better than she was yesterday?” Yukiko suggested.

Neither Zen or Rei responded to that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Good news, Hamuko's using Helel again! Bad news, that doesn't help nearly as much as she'd like it to. Probably because she hasn't tapped into Helel since Yukiko accidentally poisoned herself.
> 
> At least the rest of the floor should go relatively smoothly, not counting the caterpillars, right?
> 
> Now's probably a good time to point out that I know exactly which Personas Souji and Hamuko have on hand. As well as the ones that they used most regularly in the past but didn't bring with them, but that's a bit less important.


	8. FOE

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The second half of the second floor just so happens to be infested with killer blue caterpillars. That's not a problem, right? Right?
> 
> Rei certainly doesn't think so.

When people described the Yggdrasil Labyrinth, they either went into the dangerous monsters, the incredible treasures said to lie within, or the natural beauty of the quiet forest. The stories tended to overlook the less natural, but still necessary, structures of the Labyrinth, a number of which had their origins unknown, such as the stairways that led ever upwards.

A massive set of doors, light tan from dirt rubbed into the surface, with no sign of visible hinges.

“This is… impressive,” Zen commented, reaching out and tracing the objects with his fingertips. “An incredible piece of architecture.”

“It is, isn’t it?” Hamuko agreed. “Souji-kun, is it safe to open them?”

Souji summoned Kaguya, taking a moment to tap in to the powers of his scanner Persona. “Nothing that will jump us as soon as we step through… so long as we’re careful of the FOE.”

“An FOE?” Rei asked. “But… you said there weren’t Shadows here!”

“It’s not a Shadow,” He corrected himself. “But the power levels relative to everything else are the same, and they exhibit behaviour similar to the card soldiers back in Wonderland.”

“But the acronym FOE was chosen to represent a summary of the way Shadows operate,” Zen pointed out. “Monsters in Labyrinths or not, it doesn’t quite fit the same.”

“The long version doesn’t fit the same,” Hamuko corrected. “But we can use something else with the same acronym… hm… maybe ‘Formido Oppugnatura Exsequens’? It means, roughly, ‘the pursuing dread that will attack’, which, if any of them act like the Reaper…”

“I’m fine with it so long as we don’t have to think up another acronym,” Souji decided. “I’m no good with those.”

“You can’t be worse than Junpei.”

“Is there a story here?” Yukiko asked. Rei nodded.

“Jun-chan tried thinking up an acronym for the Power Spots, but… Leader threw it out. I thought she was going to set him on fire for a moment!”

“Hermes resisted fire, it wouldn’t have worked.”

“I imagine he was glad you did not have access to any wind spells at that time,” Zen commented. “You are… fairly predictable when irritated.” Hamuko pouted, but didn’t say anything.

“So, if it’s safe to open the doors….” Yukiko reached forward, giving a small shove, and the massive architectural wonder slowly started to move.

* * *

  
  


“Emperor, do you think?”

“I don’t know, I’ve encountered a lot of bugs that were Strength…” Zen, Rei, and Yukiko glanced at their leaders.

“Um… what are you doing?” Rei asked.

“Trying to figure out what the Arcana would be if it actually was a Shadow,” Souji replied, gesturing back at the caterpillar they had slipped past. “Of course, it would be easier if we knew how they fought…”

“Souji-kun, you’re… still using Kaguya.”

“And I’ve told you before, I’m not very good at this,” He pointed out. “I can’t get a read on how anything here interacts with wind at all, let alone the more esoteric elements. I don’t think we could easily poison them, though.”

“But… none of us use poison in our main strategies,” Zen pointed out. Yukiko just groaned.

“Souji-kun…”

“I saw the results of your lesson yesterday. Yuki-senpai, remind me how long it took to detox the kitchen.”

“Four hours… I don’t even know how it happened, I swear I didn’t leave her alone for more than a minute!”

“I think you killed one of the cats!” Rei added. “I’m not sure, though… I couldn’t really check.”

“I’ll get it right one day!”

“I suppose there is something to be said for persistence…” Zen sighed. “Please do not use me or Rei as a test subject.” Ahead of him, Souji suddenly stopped walking. “...What is it?”

“I’m feeling something…” He opened his eyes and turned to the brush right next to them. “There’s an opening here, but Rei’s the only one small enough to get safely through. There’s at least one FOE on the other side, though.”

“...I’ll do it.”

“Really, Rei?” Yukiko asked.

“Yeah. It’s just another caterpillar, right? And we can avoid those. It’s- it’s not that scary, really. Not like the ones in the other Labyrinths.”

“...Well, I guess I needed to figure out the telepathy thing eventually.”

* * *

  
  


Rei walked in silence down the forest path. The trees around her seemed as peaceful as they did elsewhere in the forest, the burble of water suggesting the presence of a nearby stream. The path seemed somewhat overgrown, as though not a lot of people walked down it, but given that accessing it had caused twigs to get stuck in the girl’s hair, that wasn’t a surprise.

“You’re coming up on the FOE.” Souji’s voice echoed through the forest, although nothing moved in acknowledgement. Rei nodded, biting her lip and continuing to work on the map.

One step, two… and she reached the end of her current trail. On one side to her, a straight path to a small box. On the other, another giant blue caterpillar. She closed her eyes, breathed in once, twice… and opened them again, nodding decisively.

For just a moment, her eyes flashed gold. And then she was running the path to the box as quickly as she could, decidedly not looking at the monster directly behind her.

Hopping over the large stones in her path, she didn’t pause for a second, scooping up the box before jumping into the trees to the side. She stumbled through the thorns for a moment before falling out onto the trail she had been on not two minutes earlier.

“Rei, I don’t think I need to tell you that wasn’t the best idea.”

“I know…” She replied, opening her prize. “...It’s just a knife.”

“I think we can all agree that, if it weren’t for the fact that we get paid to complete maps, this would not be worth it,” Hamuko’s voice echoed around Rei.

“Yuki-senpai, what are you doing? This is my Persona!”

“It’s working, isn’t it? I can sense everything!”

“Yuki-senpai!”

Rei let out a small laugh, before putting away both the box and the map, starting back the way she came. “Leader? Vice Leader? I’m heading back!”

“Great, you can help me stop Yuki-senpai from hijacking my Persona- Ow! That was my wrist!”

“Sorry! Hold on, I’ll fix it-” The communications cut off there. Honestly, that was probably a good thing.

* * *

  
  


Night saw the Masked Guild still deep in the forest, sitting in a clearing some distance from the caterpillar patrols, at least according to Souji’s Kaguya.

“We haven’t seen a lot of monsters around,” Rei commented. “Do you think it’s because of the FOEs?”

“With how large they are, it would be hard for other creatures to compete for territory,” Souji observed. “You just might be onto something, Rei.”

“That’s good, though,” Yukiko said. “As long as we avoid their paths, we’re safe.”

“We should still take turns on watch, though,” Hamuko stated. “Just in case. Zen-kun, you get the first shift. I’ll take the second. Rei-chan, Souji-kun, Yukiko-chan, you can sort out the rest yourselves.”

“That’s… surprisingly relaxed, even for you,” Souji said. “And… why Zen?”

“Because I can trust him to wake me up on time, if I haven’t already,” She replied. “And, besides me, he’s the one least likely to suffer from staying up late.”

“Yeah, I was wondering about that… you said the Dark Hour happened at midnight? How did you sleep?”

“I didn’t.”

“That explains so much…”

* * *

  
  


“Hey, Zen-kun? Is it my turn yet?”

“Leader, there are fifteen minutes remaining of my shift.” Hamuko nodded.

“Got it. I’ll just sit here, then.” She leaned back against a tree, glancing up at the sky. “Earth looks nice tonight, doesn’t it? At least, I think it’s Earth… being in another world makes it hard to tell.”

“It does indeed seem to be the same planet,” Zen agreed. “Though I do not know the name that people in this reality call it by.”

“And asking what the giant orb in the sky that’s not a moon is doesn’t seem like the best idea for blending in,” She finished. “Not that I really care about that, but Souji-kun… I’d rather not stress him out.” She shook her head. “Would you like to turn in early? I won’t be able to fall asleep again that quickly.”

“Leader, you really are too kind.”

“Yeah… that’s what everyone says.” Her voice sounded bitter. “...Sorry. I’m not upset with you. Just go to sleep, I can handle this myself. Leader’s orders.”

Zen hesitated to listen to her. But he still followed her command, soon using one of the bags as his pillow. Hamuko gave a slight smile at the sight, and then settled in for a long night in the forest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As far as I can tell, every scanning Persona has different strengths- Lucia and Juno are good at pinpointing weaknesses, Himiko and evolutions are better with static locations. Kaguya bestows an increased awareness for more immediate surroundings, but is perfectly capable of tracking the power that is an FOE.
> 
> On an unrelated note, I've figured out Etrian Odyssey classes for every party member from P3 to P5. This may be important one day. Just not today. Today, we're showing off Kaguya.
> 
> Yes, I did actually look up all the things that FOE stands for, and their meanings. I honestly considered 'Field On Enemy', but decided that, after the meaning used in PQ, it just wasn't grand enough. So, in a roundabout way, any future misspellings are all Zen's fault.


	9. One Small Mercy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rei makes a new friend.

In the early morning light- so early that the sunlight had barely peaked over the top of the trees (Though a number still questioned how, in the Yggdrasil Labyrinth, the sky was even visible)- a small lemur sat by a quickly rushing river.

The little creature reached out a paw and touched the river, only to immediately pull it back. After a few moments, it repeated the action, this time actually breaking the surface of the water before recoiling.

For a moment, the animal paced up and down the riverbank, before leaping up onto a rock. It paused, crouched, watched.

Under the water, a flash as a fish ventured close to the surface. The lemur jumped, attempting to sink its claws into the creature, only for it to wriggle away, leaving the lemur to be swept away by the river.

The small animal thrashed against the fast-flowing current, constantly trying to keep its head above the water. While it succeeded in that regard, it could not fight the water, instead getting swept along.

“Huh? What’s that?” Rei pushed herself up from where she was sitting a good bit downstream, her eyes catching sight of the poor creature. She nodded to herself, before wading out into the river and grabbing the lemur before it could be swept by.

“What were you doing there?” She asked, quietly. The lemur, upon being set down, shook itself out, before sniffing at the bag the girl carried. It pulled the bag open, before removing a nice large fish.

“...Oh! I took Vice Leader’s bag by accident! He’s not going to be happy…”

* * *

  
  


“Zen-kun, try not to worry,” Hamuko advised her friend. “Rei-chan knows how to handle Labyrinths, even if she doesn’t have the same… destructive potential that we do.”

“Nobody has the same destructive potential that you do,” Zen pointed out.

“Souji-kun’s better. He actually has lightning spells.”

“...Yes. I keep forgetting.”

Nearby, Souji and Yukiko went over the map. “I could try to scan for her,” The silver-haired boy admitted, “But I’m not sure I want to go through all that trouble just for breakfast.

“That probably won’t be necessary. She said that she wasn’t going very far,” Yukiko reassured him.

“Yes, but she also has all of the food. Why did we put all the food in one bag again?”

“Because I didn’t mean for us to stay here overnight!” Hamuko pointed out. “But then we found that side path, and we ended up in FOE territory after dark. It was the safe decision, since none of your Personas have Traesto and all.”

“I’m sorry I always trusted Teddie to know when to retreat with the rest of us,” The male Wild Card groaned. “Yukiko, do you remember which direction Rei went? Maybe we can catch up to her after breaking camp.”

“Oh, she went along the river. Downstream.”

“Leader, what do you plan on doing when we get farther into the Labyrinth?” Zen asked.

“Actually take the time to learn how Geomagnetism works,” Hamuko replied. “I’m just… putting it off because it’s like those science textbooks that Fuuka-chan liked to read.”

“Iori said you were at the top of your grade,” Souji pointed out.

“My grade wasn’t learning computer science,” Was her answer. “Thank the gods for that. Now, come one, let’s find Rei. I’m hungry!”

* * *

  
  


“...I should probably head back soon,” Rei admitted, watching her new lemur friend nibble away at the bread she’d offered. “Zen’ll be worried.”

The creature looked up at her with wide eyes, and she elaborated. “Oh, Zen’s my- he’s in the same Guild as me.” She glanced away, a slight blush on her cheeks. “He- he first asked me out… a year ago? Three? Time’s odd like that, just ask Leader. She wasn’t very happy when she was called in to decide the results of that bet.”

The lemur turned more attention to the food than the conversation. Rei sighed. “...Right. You don’t have to worry about that kind of thing. Lots of animals are like that. Like… like rabbits! You know, I used to wish that I was a rabbit,” She commented idly, though her voice didn’t carry the same happiness that her words did.

On the path behind them, the sound of voices could be heard. “See, if I spend all my time scanning, that leaves me with less time to fight. And I’m sort of the only lightning user we have, apparently.”

“Look, in my defense, odds were I was never going to go anywhere without Akihiko or Ken-kun. That it didn’t turn out that way is more fate being a dick than it was poor planning.”

“I’d say that’s just an excuse, but… given what I’ve seen of your group…”

“That was not one of our best ‘days’, just putting that out here now.”

“I’m talking about the day before we arrived here.”

“You saw them?” Rei and the lemur turned to see the rest of the Masked Guild walk down the path, Hamuko and Souji deep in discussion. “And it took you this long to tell me this? How were they?”

“I didn’t tell you because Souji-kun said it doesn’t matter anymore,” Yukiko spoke up. “But Kirijo-san, Aigis-san, and Fuuka-chan were all doing well. Sanada-san…” She trailed off, thinking.

“...What happened to Akihiko?” Souji and Yukiko both glanced away from an increasingly worried-sounding Hamuko.

“Well, um…”

“You see- oh, look, there’s Rei!”

“Vice Leader! Yukiko! What happened to Akihiko!?” They didn’t answer, instead walking over to Rei along with Zen.

“Rei. Where have you been?” Zen asked, quietly.

“Sorry…” She glanced at the lemur. “I was going to come back, but then I saw this little guy in the river, and…”

“Is that a lemur?” Yukiko stepped closer. The creature looked up, chittering. After a few moments, it stood up and bolted into the forest.

Rei ran after it. “Wait! I wanted to introduce you!” And thus, they all started running.

* * *

  
  


The chase went on for several minutes, wherein the lemur always stayed just barely in sight, even as they dodged another caterpillar. “I’m getting flashbacks…” Hamuko sighed, readjusting her sleeves.

“Do I want to know?” Yukiko asked.

“You in Wonderland. It was a rabbit, it was pink, and it just would not. Stop. Running. You wonder how all those paintings got those completely identical holes in them?”

“I thought that was just how those Labyrinths worked,” Souji pointed out. “The dungeons in the TV World were a lot like that- what’s that?”

Ahead of them, the lemur leapt at a large stone statue, knocking it to the ground, before vanishing into the forest. “...I expected that,” Zen admitted. “But why did the statue fall over?”

“Wasn’t there a wall there five seconds ago?” Yukiko turned to the stairs that had suddenly appeared behind them.

Hamuko sighed. “...Okay, I vote that we try and find a way back, and then I can read those Geomagnetism studies that Egar gave me back when we started out.”

Souji nodded. “I miss Goho-Ms…”

Rei stared at the spot that the lemur had disappeared for another moment, but eventually, even she turned to leave the labyrinth.

It was half an hour later that they all remembered they’d never eaten breakfast.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...Seriously. Hamuko's lineup contains no Zio spells. However, she has lots of wind and light. And healing. Suffice to say, Yukari was probably not on her final party, on order of being horrifically redundant.
> 
> No. Ariadne Threads are not a thing here. Either you learn to teleport, or you walk everywhere. And Hamuko was seriously considering walking everywhere. The others.... were not.


	10. About the World

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Masked Guild decides to have a research day.
> 
> They end up giving themselves more questions than answers.

The library in Iorys wasn’t really anything special. Just rows and rows of neatly-sorted shelves, with books that were all red, blue, or brown. The tables were a bit messier, but that was due to the groups of people reading at them, and a number of them taking notes.

“...I’m wondering if it wouldn’t be easier to teach myself magic…” Hamuko groaned, glancing at a sheet of calculations. “This just… makes no sense.”

“It’s perfectly clear to me,” Zen stated, picking up another one. “Also, you calculated the  _ L _ value wrong six pages back.”

“And you’re only telling me now?”

On the other side of the table, Yukiko was reading a book on the races of Arcania. “Celestrians are known for their wide variety of pigmentation and magical prowess, with the strongest amongst them having bright red, gold, or blue eyes. Huh.”

“They’re completely from this reality,” Souji told her. “Not that they couldn’t have ancestry in the collective unconscious, but it’s not anything recent.”

“I know, but… wouldn’t that mean there are Shadows here?”

“I haven’t sensed any, but it’s always possible,” He admitted. “Though I haven’t heard anything about blobs of slime with masks on them.”

“Do people generally talk about seeing Shadows?” Rei asked them.

“That’s a good point,” Yukiko noted. “But nobody knew what a Persona was before we came. I don’t think we have to worry too much about Shadows.”

“If we’d have to worry at all,” Souji finished. “He might have been a special case, but Teddie was still the first Shadow I ever met, and completely harmless.”

“He was a Shadow!?”

“...I’m pretty sure the emphasis is on ‘was’, but yeah…. You didn’t notice?”

Yukiko started flipping through the pages of her book. “Oh, so humans here are called ‘Earthlains’... that’s odd.”

“Sounds like we’re in an alien movie or something,” Souji opined.

“Do you think the people here have ever gone to Earth?” Rei asked.

“That sounds right,” The male Wild Card agreed. “It could have started as ‘Earthling’ and then gotten lost in translation. It would have to have happened a long time ago, given the level of technology around here, but it’s possible.”

Back on the other side of the table, meanwhile, Hamuko had given up on the calculations and handed them off to Zen, instead opening a book on the local myths.

* * *

  
  


A few hours later, Hamuko shut the book she was reading. “I have to go now,” She told her friends. “There’s something I need to look into.”

“Right now?” Zen asked. “Is it really that important?”

She shrugged. “Probably more to me than to you.”

“Well, don’t let us keep you waiting.” After she’d left, Zen took his calculations and joined the others on their side of the table. “We have two hours before this library closes for the day. Have you found anything important?”

“Nothing worth sharing,” Souji replied. “It’s all theoretical stuff- Yggdrasil was closed a long time ago, and it’s only just opened again. There’s not a lot of recent information to go around.”

“We do know why it was closed, though,” Yukiko continued. “Apparently, there was once a war over the resources of the tree, and that’s why there are barriers. With the way blocked, though, people can’t go very high into Yggdrasil, so it’s mostly unexplored.”

“Is there a way past them?” Rei asked.

“Some people have managed to use the Geomagnetic Fields to warp by, but only one at a time, and I don’t think Yuki-senpai would be very happy to calculate that.”

“I could do the calculations,” Zen pointed out, “But she’s still have to execute it.”

“Which leaves us with nothing,” Souji sighed. “I suppose we could start by looking into the statues, but I don’t even know where to start on things like this.”

“Well, they’d still be in the Labyrinth section,” Yukiko replied. “But I think it’d be better to start on the local magic. We don’t want to use anything that’ll scare people, after all. At least, not around them.”

Subject decided, they all returned to their research.

* * *

  
  


Hamuko glanced at some people who were walking past, talking about buying masks. “Huh… you think there’s a festival coming up, or something?” She mused quietly, glancing around to make sure that nobody heard her.

“...Right. I guess it doesn’t matter. But it’s been a while since I’ve had something worth celebrating.”

She reached down to her left sleeve, fiddling with the edges. “...No. It’s okay. I just-”

“Hey, Hamuko!” She turned around to see Lili run up to her. “Didn’t expect to see you here. What are you doing?”

Hamuko paused and shook her head. “Nothing, really. I thought I found a lead on something, but even if it pans out, it won’t be for a while. So I figured I’d take a walk, and here I am.”

“Really? That’s all?”

“You don’t have to sound so disappointed!”

“I guess, but… with everything that happens in the Labyrinths…”

“All the more reason to try and live normally out here,” She pointed out. “Though, your definition of normal may vary. What are you doing here?”

“Oh, I’m picking up a few things. My friend Solor managed to slip past the barriers yesterday, so we’re preparing to move on. ...Why are you messing with your sleeve like that?”

“Sorry, it’s… a nervous habit of mine. Sometimes, I don’t even realize I’m doing it. Anyway, if you’re preparing for the higher floors of the Labyrinth, why are you talking to me?”

“...Right, I should go do that. See you later!” Once Lili was gone, Hamuko sighed and shook her head, turning around again.

“I swear… she is far too much like I used to be. Of course, she’s probably not going to be spending all her time talking to a dead man, but… that’s nostalgia for you.”

* * *

  
  


“Has anyone else noticed that Hamuko-san’s been acting… different… ever since we got here?” Yukiko asked as the group left the library.

Rei nodded. “Leader seemed normal for a while, but even then… she’s supposed to be happier than this, isn’t she?”

“You’ve known her for longer than us,” Souji pointed out. “But it’s been quite some time since then, at least for her. It’s not surprising that she’s changed, especially given...” He trailed off. “Yukiko, we’re not telling her about Sanada-san.”

“I thought we’d already agreed on that?”

“Why?” Zen asked. “Was it really that bad?”

Souji paused. “...Let’s just say I’m surprised he still had Caesar.”

“Ah. Say no more.”

“...Are Personas really that important?” Rei asked.

“Not always,” Souji admitted. “I use Izanagi in his base form most of the time because I don’t need anything more, but…”

“My first Persona was Konohana Sakuya,” Yukiko finished. “She became Amaterasu after I came to an important decision, and Sumeo-Okami once I was completely sure of it. And Persona’s a mental power, so losing Sumeo…”

“If that’s the case, it’s no surprise our leader is acting differently,” Zen pointed out. “Even if she uses the same Persona that she did before.”

“She’s not going to tell us what she did to lose it, though…” Rei sighed, before starting on another topic. “Anyway, who wants to get something to eat on the way back? I’m hungry!”

With that, the subject was successfully changed to an argument about which cafe they’d rather visit that day, with Souji making the final decision since he was the one that carried the most money.

It might also have had something to do with the appearance of Black Frost in the general vicinity, but that was what everyone else would claim.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The moral of the story? Don't let Hamuko be alone. She's got issues.
> 
> Celestrians as a race may have roots in their local collective unconsciousness, but that's not particularly important for the moment.
> 
> Teddie being a Shadow was considered to be the worst-kept secret of the whole Investigation Team. Them not caring about it probably helps with that.


	11. All That Glimmers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There's a lot of shiny things about. Very, very shiny things.
> 
> Also a lot of very, very pointy things, but those are less important.

In front of the stairs to the third floor, the Masked Guild stood. Apart from them was a single squirrel with shimmering golden fur.

“It’s a Shiny!” Rei cheered, already retrieving an arrow from her quiver. Hamuko sighed.

“How do you even know that reference…?”

“Yosuke brought his DS to the Culture Festival and she asked him why his Buneary sparkled,” Souji reminded her. “I’m still not sure why he had a charger on hand, though…”

“Probably just stuffed it in his bag once and forgot about it.” Everyone glanced at Hamuko. “...What?”

“Hamuko-san… you know not everyone’s like you, right?” Yukiko asked.

“No… but she does have a point. That is something that Yosuke would do,” Souji agreed, before crushing his Persona card. Izanagi almost lazily shot a Zio attack at the squirrel, killing it instantly.

“So, shall we move on to the next floor?” Zen suggested.

“That is what we planned for the day.” Souji nodded, before adding, “Anyway, while we were in town, I heard something interesting.”

“What is it, Vice Leader?” Rei asked.

“Well, they say there’s some odd golden stones on the third floor- depending on what time it is, they can start to glow.”

“Glow? Really?” Yukiko turned to him. “And they’re just… lying around?”

“I assume that they are decently rare,” He replied. “If it’s not just another legend.”

“Not that we have reason to believe the legends untrue,” Zen pointed out. “None of us have been here before after all.”

“Glowing stones sound interesting, though…” Yukiko commented, as Hamuko started leading them up the stairs. “Assuming they’re not dangerous, anyway.”

“If they were dangerous, odds are there’d be warnings,” Hamuko remarked. “Glowing golden stones… we’ll keep our eyes out.”

* * *

  
  


The third floor, at first, was peaceful. Quiet. Serene. Just like the two floors prior. Therefore, just like the two floors prior, it was likely full of hidden dangers.

This approach would likely have seemed paranoid to any who had not braved Labyrinths prior- and maybe it still seemed a little bit so, with Zen and Rei keeping their weapons drawn at all times, Hamuko’s Evoker constantly in hand, and Yukiko’s eyes darting from bush to bush, looking for poor, questionably innocent woodland creatures that she could charbroil.

“Does anyone hear that?” Zen asked, pausing. Hamuko stopped as well.

“There’s probably something up ahead, but… I can’t tell what it is. Tread lightly, guys.”

“So she says…” Souji muttered. “Never mind that she’s the one most likely to go charging in.”

“I heard that!”

“You were meant to!” He replied, a slight smile on his face. He stepped forward, glancing left and right.

He didn’t look at the ground. Nor did they notice the extremely well-camouflaged arrow dispensers.

“How are these even here!?” Hamuko complained, summoning Orpheus and cloaking herself in flame, Yukiko and Souji quickly copying her approach and covering Zen and Rei.

Notably, however, none of them stopped moving, even for a second. Which was probably how, five minutes later, Rei and Souji emerged from the arrow storm to see that there was nobody else in sight.

* * *

  
  


Souji peered over a log. “Okay, nobody in sight, not even a monster, and Zen had the map. I think we’re lost.”

“Probably,” Rei agreed, packing the arrows she’d managed to pick up from the trap that hadn’t been charred beyond recognition into her quiver. “But we didn’t know where we were going in the first place, so…”

“...And that basically sums up my life ever since I got Izanagi,” He finished for her. “But before, we had Teddie.” He sighed and leaned back against the log. “We probably shouldn’t stay here for very long, even if there don’t seem to be any FOEs in the area.”

She nodded. “But where will we go?”

“Normally, I’d suggest going back the way we came, but…” They both glanced at Rei’s greatly-expanded arrow stock. “That doesn’t seem to be a very good idea right now.”

“So… what now?”

“Well, either we wait in the general area for the others to come find us- which they might not do even with the map- or we wander in a direction at random, because I don’t want to waste time scanning when I’m also the only one here with a Persona.”

“I can fight…” Rei muttered.

“I never said you couldn’t. It’s just somewhat relieving to have the ability to turn Yggdrasil into a raging bonfire if necessary.”

“Can’t you do that yourself?”

“That’s not the point- you’re baiting me, aren’t you?” He groaned. “At least you’re more clear about it than Yuki-senpai… then again, she’s used to Sanada-san and Aragaki-san…”

“I thought you and Leader liked fighting?” They both stopped talking for a moment, turning to a bush that was rustling. “...Did we stay here too long?”

“I don’t think so,” Souji replied. “If we did, it would have attacked already.” A small creature leapt out from the bushes, landing on the ground in front of them.

Rei grinned. “Oh, it’s you!” Before proceeding to chase the lemur through the forest once again. Souji sighed, and looked up again with a barely-hidden smile.

“Rei, wait up!”

* * *

  
  


Rei’s lemur friend continued to lead her and Souji in much the same way as on the previous floor, always staying just close enough to be in sight, though never near enough to let itself be caught. Given that the two of them were now boosting themselves with magic, that was fairly impressive.

“Just how smart is this thing, anyway!?” Souji asked, pausing for just long enough to apply a new Masukukaja.

“I dunno. It was just there,” Rei replied, not even slightly tripped up by the change in speed. “I pulled it out of the river and gave it breakfast.”

“It says a lot about my life that I’m not questioning that,” He stated, hopping over a boulder and around a tangle of roots, only to notice that the creature he’d been chasing had disappeared. “...Where’d the lemur go?”

Rei shrugged, looking around in disappointment. She walked along the edges of the path, only to pause and kick something into the center. It pulsed with a soft orange light, and Souji bent down in order to approach it.

“It looks like… some kind of gem.” He picked it up, rolling the marble-shaped rock in his fingers.

“Weren’t the ones in the story supposed to be gold?”

“That’s what you’re questioning?” Souji asked, before shaking his head. “Still, it’s nice to see the rumors are still somewhat accurate.”

“What do you think we should do with it?” Rei asked, walking up and peering at it herself. Souji closed his hand around the stone and slid it into his pocket.

“I could probably get someone to put it in a bracelet or something. Yukiko would like that.”

“I’d say it’d look better on a necklace.”

“Yes, but Yukiko doesn’t wear necklaces,” He explained. “At least not since that eagle Shadow tried choking her by the last one.”

“...Yeah, that would do it.” The two of them stood in the middle of nowhere for a moment, before she turned to him. “So, what next?”

“Well, this is a dead end, clearly, so I’m thinking….”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...So, originally, the wedding ring plot was left almost completely untouched. But then I realized there wasn't a way to do that without ending up with a bitter Hamuko. So instead the floor focuses on splitting the party.
> 
> Yes, I did just give Yosuke a fluffy pink sparkly rabbit. Mostly because I could. And because he was the person most likely to have a portable gaming console with him in PQ besides Hamuko herself, and she didn't put literally everything in that bag. Besides, the P3 cast was stretching it with their cell phones as it is.


	12. Birds and Beasts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein Hamuko, Yukiko, and Zen attempt to deal with a group split with all the dignity they can manage. They don't do very well at it.

Hamuko, Yukiko, and Zen emerged from a storm of arrows, Hamuko and Yukiko dismissing Orpheus and Sumeo-Okami so that the flames cloaking them and Zen dissipated. “And… safe!” Hamuko cheered, grinning.

Zen seemed less enthused. “Rei… where is Rei?”

“Souji-kun’s missing, too,” Yukiko noted, a touch of worry in her voice. “They were together, right?”

“Probably,” Hamuko nodded. “And Souji-kun’s good enough at fire magic that they should be fine, but… now what? I don’t think we should go back the way we came.”

“We need to find Rei,” Zen stated. “She’ll be with Vice Leader, if she is safe.”

“She will be,” Hamuko said. “She has to be. If the apocalypse itself isn’t enough to stop her, she’ll be just fine.”

“...But she was with me for that.”

“Zen-kun, I am trying not to break down in the middle of Yggdrasil,” The leader stated. “Please don’t make it any harder than it needs to be.” Hearing those words, Zen dipped his head.

“Very well. I apologize.”

Yukiko glanced back down the path that the arrow trap was on. “How do you mark that on a map?”

Zen sighed. “With great difficulty, especially as-” Hamuko handed him a new pen. “...Why is it purple?”

“Sorry, wrong pen.” She swapped it out for a new black one. “This one’s mine.”

“Dare I ask why you have a purple pen when part of the reason for us being here to get things to sell?”

“I’m an impulse buyer?”

“Don’t you do everything on impulse?” Yukiko asked. Hamuko used her Evoker to materialize an odd geometric figure that started emitting a very cold white mist. “...Right. Never mind.” Alilat vanished back into Hamuko’s soul, where it belonged rather than being used to deal with fire users that annoyed her, especially when Hamuko was primarily a fire user herself.

Zen brushed a layer of frost off of his uniform, promptly massaging his fingers. “Leader, was that really necessary?”

Hamuko didn’t answer, instead striding farther into the forest.

* * *

  
  


Eventually, the wandering trio came across another large stone door. “What kind of FOE do you think is behind this one?” Yukiko asked.

“Do you really believe there is an FOE here?” Zen turned to her. “Wouldn’t it make more sense for those doors to be locked behind statues?”

“Not unless they wanted to block off everything. The statues work on line of sight,” The black-haired girl responded. “Maybe they didn’t have enough?”

“Perhaps. This world’s magic makes little sense to me,” He admitted. “It is both easier for mortals to use, and more naturally structured, at least in my experience.”

“I’m not too sure your experience is accurate to humans, given that you like to shape your magic in the exact same way,” Hamuko commented. “But I’ll keep it in mind. Okay, you ready for this?”

“I don’t see how we really have a choice,” Yukiko said. At this, Hamuko pushed the door open and they entered the next area.

The snarling monster in the next room was yellow-orange, with an odd birdlike face. “Is that a bear?” Zen asked.

“No, bears are nicer than that,” Yukiko immediately responded. Not that the conversation could continue, as the beast had already seen them and was starting in their direction.

A number of moving vines sprung up in their path, only to be blasted by fireballs timed to a chromatic scale. “Where do these things keep coming from!?” Hamuko complained, Orpheus vanishing once again.

“Is now really the time for this?” Zen shot back, waving his hand sending a spray of icicles back at the FOE.

“It’s this or panic because it’s just like the Reaper!”

“I’ve never understood that comparison very well,” Yukiko admitted. “In the TV, Death would always just hide in random boxes.”

“...If it had done that to me, I think I would have thrown it off the top of Tartarus.” Hamuko shoved the next door open and the three of them stumbled through, before pushing it closed once again. “One of these days, we really need to compare notes better. The Reaper hiding in a box just sound weird.”

“I agree with Leader,” Zen stated. “That is very much atypical behaviour. What if nobody ever opened the box?”

“It can’t be that strange…”

“Honestly, I’m used to it doing weird things,” Hamuko admitted. “Like circling helplessly at the bottom of the stairs while we took potshots at it, that was always fun.”

“I think I enjoyed crushing it with those pistons, myself.”

Zen stared at them. “Does it not bother you that you’re talking about an aspect of Death that way?”

“I beat another aspect of Death at DDR once. I think I stopped caring after a while.”

“Same. Well, besides the DDR part.” Zen just shook his head and proceeded to ignore the girls for the next fifteen minutes.

* * *

  
  


Some time later, the group was forced to admit that they were horribly lost- more so than they’d expected to be. “How many statues did we pass?” Hamuko asked, trying to make sense of the map.

“A better question would be how many are still standing,” Zen opined. “They are a lot less sturdy than I’d imagined them to be.”

“That is sort of our fault, though,” Yukiko admitted. “And it’s better to have the doors available, really.” With that, she gently tapped another statue, watching it fall to the ground without offering any resistance whatsoever.

“Still, we have been here for quite a while- we have not found Leader and Rei, nor have we found a way out.”

“So maybe it would have been a better idea to wait until those calculations were done…”

“How long have we been here, anyway?” Yukiko asked. “It feels like it’s been a while.”

“If we were back in town, we would be eating dinner by now,” Zen replied.

“Really?” Hamuko checked her watch. “...You know, given that we arrived here in the morning, that’s probably a bad sign. Please don’t tell me Souji-kun had the food.”

“Very well. I will not tell you.”

“Zen-kun…”

“You know, we should probably start dividing up the food better,” Yukiko commented. “It can’t be easy to find enough in this forest-” The three of them stopped walking as the ground shook beneath them. “...What was that?”

“I’m not sure, but we should probably check it out,” Hamuko decided. “Worst case, it’s an FOE, in which case all we need to do is just run to the nearest door.”

“Hamuko-san, I… don’t think that’s how it works.”

“Why? They don’t have very powerful magic, they can’t hurt us that much.” With that, she set off in the direction of the noise. Zen and Yukiko exchanged glances before following her.

As it turned out, the source of the noise was a boar that had concussed itself by ramming into a rock. “Is this normal animal behaviour?” Zen asked.

“It feels more like something an FOE Shadow would do…” Yukiko agreed. Hamuko just shrugged and brandished her naginata.

“Well… I know what we’re eating for dinner tonight!”

* * *

  
  


“You know, there’s a certain simplicity to meals cooked over an open flame,” Hamuko began, the fabric of her left sleeve officially more twisted than the vines that had tried to attack, only to be flung into the trees by a quick Magarudyne spell. Nobody was sure if they were actually dead or not, but none of them actually bothered checking, either. “Really, any idiot can do it if they have access to matches or fire magic.”

Zen and Yukiko didn’t meet her gaze. Given that it had taken three tries for them to get meat that was actually edible- due to a combination of distractions causing them to drop it in the fire and random monster attacks- it was completely understandable.

“Honestly, normally I wouldn’t complain about this. But I need a hand free to use my powers, and I’m aware that Zen-kun, at least, is capable of at least providing himself with basic sustenance. Yet I finished eating before either of you could start.”

“Sorry…” Yukiko’s eyes were still firmly on the ground. “I just kept thinking about Souji-kun…”

“And it is… difficult… not to worry about Rei,” Zen finished.

Hamuko sighed, and none of them said anything, until she looked up again. “...What’s it like? To have a normal relationship.”

“I do not understand your question,” Zen stated. Yukiko just shrugged.

“I wouldn’t call it normal, not really… normal couples don’t consider running through a mental world inside of a television to be a ‘date’.”

“I imagine that I question my sanity much less than you do,” Zen suggested.

“That’s not what I meant, and you both know it.” But she let the subject drop there. Neither of the others tried to bring it up again, either. “...Hurry up and eat. We should be able to cover a lot more ground before it gets dark.”

Neither Zen or Yukiko tried to argue.

* * *

  
  


After some time, Hamuko was once more using her naginata as a walking stick, much to the annoyance of Zen and Yukiko, who didn’t really trust any of the local plants enough to touch them. Mostly because of the vines that had been irritating them ever since they took their first steps into the Labyrinth.

None of them tried to say anything, being more focused on finding their way back to the stairs, which would provide an easier way out.

As the three of them cut through a small path that was probably used more often by boars then people, there was a flash of blue-violet light before the world was plunged into darkness.

“...I’m not sure if I’ll ever get used to this,” Yukiko admitted. “At least it doesn’t happen outside Yggdrasil.”

“Honestly, I’m just glad this is the only way it seems to warp space and time,” Hamuko shrugged. “I mean, at least I can tell myself I’ve seen weirder.”

“Perhaps it gets stranger higher up in the Labyrinth,” Zen suggested. “There are only four really explored floors after all.” Which was true. While the barrier on the fifth floor was weaker than it once had been, there was still something powering it.

Several had ventured deep into the floor to try and find the source of this power. None of them had come back.

Therefore, it should not have been a surprise to anyone that the Masked Guild planned on being the next to explore the depths of that floor. But that was for the future, either way.

“So long as it all stays roughly in the realms of Euclidean geometry, I don’t think I care either way.”

“Hamuko-san… you have odd standards.” Behind Hamuko and Yukiko, Zen paused. “Oh? What is it?”

“I feel something…”

Hamuko tilted her head. “Yeah, now that you mention it… it feels like non-elemental magic? It’s coming from this direction.”

“Are you sure?” Yukiko asked. “I can’t feel anything.”

“You are also completely human,” Zen pointed out. “I am not, and Leader…”

“Not even I know what my deal is, really.”

“That’s probably not a good sign…”

“Trust me, I know,” Hamuko sighed. “But since this situation has no possible precedent, the specifics don’t really matter, do they? Oh, there it is!” She grinned and skipped over to a small stone embedded in the ground near the roots of a tree. She picked it up, admiring the silver glow that lit up her face. “...I’m keeping this.”

“We do not even know what that is,” Zen stated.

“I’m still keeping it.”

“You know we can’t stop Hamuko-san,” Yukiko shrugged. “But do you think it’s safe?”

“Even if it’s not, I’ve already touched it with my bare hands,” The leader pointed out, slipping the rock into her pocket. “Come on, I think I’ve figured out where we are. Zen-kun, you have those calculations I asked you to do, right?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...It turns out that, after enough life-or-death situations, it's hard to take them seriously anymore. Zen has just begun to realize that.
> 
> The best part of this is that, through the whole day, they were constantly passing by the paths that Rei and Souji were using and opening doors for them. They're just not that observant. Or maybe Yggdrasil is non-Euclidean after all. It would explain the placement of both stairs on the first floor... and the sky... at least it doesn't break physics as blatantly as Rei's Labyrinths and Tartarus?
> 
> I recently realized that Zen really is just a re-skinned Runemaster/Warlock, and that he and Yukiko pretty much swapped classes between games. But the class names as they are really do fit the characters better, so it still works out.


	13. Lost and Found

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Souji and Rei are still lost. Somewhere along the way, they pick up Jenetta.
> 
> This doesn't help. At all.

A few hours after they’d found the orange stone, Souji and Rei were still wandering the Labyrinth without any real destination in mind besides, perhaps, ‘out’. Souji’s hands were tightly gripping his katana, while Rei’s fingers were never far from her quiver, yet they gave off an air of relaxation and not caring what the Labyrinth could throw at them.

“You see anything?” Rei asked, sounding rather bored, though she still flinched whenever she heard so much as the crack of a twig.

Souji sighed and shook his head. “Nothing yet. Of course, that also means there’s no FOEs, but… was it this hard for you, the last time?”

“We weren’t really lost, the last time,” Rei told him. “At least, not like this. I blame the clocks more than anything.”

“Hey, now, what would Zen think if he heard you say that?”

“He’d agree. We were in there for hours. ...Well, so much as we could be, anyway.”

“We never did figure that out, did we…?” Souji mused. “I mean, we agreed no time really passed, otherwise Sanada-san wouldn’t have won that bet, but other than that…” He trailed off, and the two of them stopped talking.

A few moments later, the ground started to shake beneath their feet. Turning, they saw a giant stone wall in the middle of the Labyrinth transform into a door similar to the other ones scattered about.

They both turned in the opposite direction, but the statue was rather far off and the area overgrown, so they didn’t see the other three members of their Guild walk off into the rest of the forest, talking about whatever came to mind.

“So, should we go in?” Rei asked.

“I don’t see much of a reason not to. My Personas are powerful enough to fight anything that comes our way here, even if they lack the sheer… presence... of Thanatos and Orpheus Telos.”

“That’s not the word you were going to use, was it?”

“It’s the closest I’ve got that’s actually one word. Just… Don’t tell Yuki-senpai I said this. Especially about one of her initial Personas.”

“You never had problems saying it before.”

“Yeah, but that was before I gained my resolve. Izanagi-no-Okami… I’d like to bring him out, it’s been awhile, but if something needs him…”

“Never stopped Leader.”

“She had the choice of Orpheus Telos or Thanatos at the time. I don’t think there was an option that wasn’t overkill, for one side or another. But then, that’s why she’s the leader.” He shrugged, pretending that being passed up for leadership of the combined group- twice, even, and both times due more to luck than anything- didn’t still bother him. “Come on, maybe there’ll be something good in here.”

That said, he opened the door, and the two of them stepped through.

* * *

  
  


Jenetta pulled a silver coin out of a backpack lying on the ground, acting like her hand wasn’t swollen with the venom of Toxipede larvae. Larvae that were attempting to take their home back into the underbrush, with mixed success.

She picked up the bag and threw it farther into the woods, as if the continued stings didn’t bother her at all, before sitting down and pulling a bottle and roll of bandages out of her pocket.

“Oh, not again!” She groused, opening the bottle one-handed and letting the antidote spill out all over her injury. “Of all the times for someone to mess with the statues…”

“Jenetta? What are you doing here?” She glanced up to see Souji walking along the path, followed closely by Rei.

“I got lost,” She stated, using the simplest possible explanation. “What about the rest of your Guild?”

“We got lost,” Rei replied. “You wanna try and get out with us?”

The green-haired woman nodded. “That does sound like a good idea. Oh, and maybe we could pick some moon apples on the way!”

Souji paused. “Moon apples?”

“You know, those golden things on the trees around here? Sure, you can buy them, but the natural-grown Yggdrasil ones taste the sweetest!”

Souji and Rei looked at each other and shrugged. “They sound tasty,” Rei ventured. “Where can you find them?”

“Oh, the trees are scattered here and there… oh, don’t step there, it’s a caterpillar…” Souji winced.

“Couldn’t have mentioned that five seconds ago? ...I wish I’d kept something with Patra, using Salvation on this is a total waste of magic.” Yet he cast the spell anyway, not caring that this was Jenetta’s first encounter with a Persona, and healing her ills in addition to his own.

“Huh? What’s that thing?”

“Oh, it’s a Persona. Leader and Vice Leader have a lot of them… Yuki-chan has one, too… it’s really just me and Zen that don’t have them, and I…” Rei abruptly stopped. “Never mind. Come on, let’s get out of here already!”

* * *

  
  


Deep in the peaceful glades of the Tutelary Forest, almost all was still. Almost.

The part that wasn’t still was the area where Jenetta, Souji, and Rei were fleeing from a large bear-like creature that bore a startling resemblance to a masked owl. Suffice to say, they were not happy about it, and a number of hastily thrown Bufudynes commenced.

The trio managed to make it to a set of door on the other side of the clearing, pushing them open and dashing through.

“Hurry and close it!” Jenetta shouted. Rei quickly complied, shoving them more roughly than her size would let others believe she was capable of, causing a loud bang to echo through the previously-peaceful verdant woodlands.

“How’s this?” She asked, her eyes fading back to their normal clear blue.

Souji collapsed on the ground, exhausted now that the last Masukukaja had worn off. “That’s fine, Rei. We might not be going back through there anytime soon, though.”

Rei glanced around the clearing, taking in the neatly arranged rows of trees. “Oh, are those olives?”

Jenetta looked up. “Yeah, looks like it. This must be that old grove they were trying to plant, back before they realized how many of those bigger monsters there are. Ooh, we can use them for a quick snack!”

“Yeah, that sounds good!” Souji looked at them and shook his head.

“Actually, why not use them as a side dish for dinner? I do have the food bag, after all.”

Rei nodded. “Yeah, that’ll be great!” Before they could venture into the grove, however, they noticed a number of vines slipping up into the trees. “...Or maybe not…”

“It’ll be fine!” Jenetta shrugged. “I mean, we just have to not touch the vines, right?”

“That’s… not what I’m worried about,” Rei admitted, while Souji stepped forward.

“I’ll go ahead, see how many monsters I can get rid of. I need a way to relieve stress, anyway… don’t want to end up snapping here, of all places.”

A few moments later, the grove was filled with flashes of lightning. Five minutes later, all of the monsters were either dead or hiding.

Souji would never again be bothered by a non-FOE monster on the third floor of Arcania’s Yggdrasil.

* * *

  
  


The three of them spent the night in the olive grove, enjoying their new status as dreaded by the monsters of this branch of Yggdrasil. But then, nights in the Labyrinth were usually peaceful, as most of the creatures that would venture out at that time were fungal in origin, or possibly plantlike.

Maybe. Figuring out the exact taxonomy of the weird creatures dwelling in the forest had never been very high on anyone’s priority list besides the fact that some of them ate each other, and that most of them had no tolerance for intruders to their domain.

They all decided to wake themselves up using the cold river water. It went fairly well, if one ignored Rei’s attempts to scare Souji with turtles, which ended in a number of innocent nearby tortoises being frozen, electrocuted, and lit on fire. Well, reasonably innocent. It was Yggdrasil, after all.

“Was that really necessary?” Jenetta asked. Souji didn’t respond, instead focusing on packing up camp.

“If we hurry, that FOE may still be asleep…” He muttered, not particularly paying any attention to his friends.

Somehow, neither of them seemed like they expected anything different.

* * *

  
  


By the time that the three of them emerged from the Labyrinth, it had already gotten dark again, they were out of food and medicine, and Rei needed a new bowstring. Tired and yawning, they stumbled back to the inn, not minding at all the cats that gathered around, mewling at the return of their two favorite people.

“So, I’m sort of wondering just how lost you guys managed to get.” They glanced up, to see Hamuko standing in front of them, relief clear on her face. “Really, two days? I got out with Zen-kun and Yukiko-chan after only ten hours.”

“Good for you…” Souji grumbled.

“Is there anything left to eat?” Rei asked. Hamuko sighed.

“Yes. No thanks to any of you, but there is a little bit left over from dinner. Remember to share it, I’ve been working to cover the stuff you missed.” Turning away from Jenetta, she walked back in the direction of the stairs. “I’ll tell Zen-kun and Yukiko-chan that you’re back, and they don’t have to make death threats at me anymore.”

“Have they been doing that a lot?” Souji asked.

“More Zen-kun than Yukiko, but…” And that was all she had to say on the matter.

Rei sighed. “I’ll talk to him…”

“Really, though,” Hamuko said, facing them once again. “It’s good to have you back. We’ll have to see about finishing that map, but let’s have some sleep first, okay?”

Now that was something they could all agree on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Today I realized that, of all the party members, Souji and Rei are currently the ones least able to relate to each other that are physically capable of doing so. They probably won't be a lone pair for a party split again until something happens to change that.


	14. The Proving

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Masked Guild versus a random FOE. That's about it.

“And… done!” Rei declared, filling in the last spaces on the Guild’s map of the third floor. “That was easy!”

It had been, once they’d started keeping an eye out for traps and the like. The five of them now sat in front of the stairs back down to the second floor, comparing the previous attempt made by Zen with Souji and Rei’s experiences, as well as the results of their newest exploration.

“Things that run after you are a lot easier to avoid than patrollers, aren’t they?” Yukiko mused, as though the five times they’d stumbled into Owl Beast territory hadn’t been absolutely terrifying.

“It isn’t like they’d be that much of a threat either way,” Souji noted. “It would be difficult to bring them down, but we just need to hold them off long enough to evade… or simply fight tactically.”

Hamuko gained a thoughtful look. “Leader, what are you planning?” Zen asked. She shrugged.

“Well, the enemies here are weak. You know, You in Wonderland weak, if you pretend that the beetles didn’t exist.”

“Beetles?” Yukiko asked.

“You didn’t run into any?” Hamuko turned to Souji and Yukiko, groaning when they shook their heads. “...I hate you both. So much right now. You have no idea.”

“There were a lot of them on the third floor,” Rei explained. “All it took to bring them down was a Bufula, but they were really fast!”

“The golden one was fairly simple to bring down, though,” Zen reminisced. Souji nodded.

“Yeah, I remember that one. It wouldn’t have been so easy if so many of us didn’t use lightning spells, though.”

“...I wonder what it would have been like if we’d found our resolve before facing it…” Hamuko trailed off, and Souji tapped her on the shoulder.

“Yuki-senpai, we don’t have time for your power fantasies.”

“I guess not… so, who wants to fight a poisonous caterpillar to prove we’ve still got it?”

“Yuki-senpai!”

* * *

  
  


“...I can’t believe you talked us into this…” Souji groaned, preemptively sorting through the medicine bags.

“This should be fun!” Rei grinned. “After all, if Leader thinks it’ll be easy, there’s nothing to worry about, right?”

Zen sighed. “Rei, our leader has said she has no sense of danger. It will not be that simple.”

“She was joking, though!”

“She said she was joking,” The dark-skinned boy corrected. “I do not believe she was, however, as her actions say otherwise.”

“Hey, now, that’s not true!” Hamuko puffed her cheeks out. “If I didn’t have a sense of danger, back then I’d be using just Thanatos!” They all shuddered at the thought.

“Let us all be thankful for Yuki-senpai’s sense of danger, as it has probably saved many a card soldier from an ignoble demise at the hands of Death itself.”

“Souji-kun…” Yukiko started to laugh. It took another fifteen minutes for her to wind down. Once she had, however, the others stood and the started to walk through the forest, with a clear direction in mind.

It was time for battle.

* * *

  
  


The caterpillar FOE chosen as their enemy for this first attempt at a hunt was rather close to the stairs between the second and third floors of Yggdrasil, but a fair bit to the south. Or, they assumed it was the south. They didn’t have a compass or anything, and the magnetic fields around Yggdrasil had never exactly been ordinary, even before people started figuring out how to use them to teleport.

Incidentally, from what information they could gather, it seemed to be the only Toxipede known to patrol from east to west, instead of north to south.

“It’s like the card soldiers on the first floor,” Yukiko noted. “All of the others just went in a straight line, but they moved around in circles.” And anomalous FOE behavior was, of course, a good way to choose a target- why fight the same enemies as everyone else, after all?

Or, at least, that was what they said. It might also have had something to do with the fact that it was closest. Either way, they now lurked on the forest trail, waiting for the unsuspecting insect to venture in front of them.

They weren’t going to hold back, either. Yukiko held Sumeo-Okami’s card in her hands, as did Souji for Mada, while Hamuko had already called upon Surt.

“This seems like a bit much, doesn’t it?” Zen asked, glancing at the fire that wreathed his own hands, before shaking his head and letting the flames die out.

“It’s just the opening attack,” Souji pointed out. “We’ll probably switch once we’ve got started- we just need a really good start, just in case.”

“Do you think it’s really that dangerous?” Rei questioned, peering around the trees to eye the ever-closer sky blue caterpillar. “Oh, here it comes!”

“Got it.” Souji nodded, crushing the card in his hand. “Now, Mada! Agidyne!” Besides him, Yukiko cried out the name of the same spell, while Hamuko called for a Ragnarok. Suffice to say, the fact that the forest did not immediately catch fire said something about the way physics and Yggdrasil interacted- completely fine, until someone decided to take a second look, at which point it became overwhelmingly clear that something was off.

Not that these five particularly cared. They just didn’t want to burn down the tree.

“How is that thing still alive?” Hamuko asked, seeing the Toxipede pick itself up, albeit with no small amount of difficulty. “When Junpei, Koro-chan and I tried that, everything that didn’t resist fire was charred to a crisp!”

“Maybe it just has thick skin?” Yukiko suggested.

“...You say that as a joke, but that might actually be the case. Either way, I do not see it living much longer even if we no longer attack it.” Zen eyed the creature cautiously, yet made no movements in its direction.

“...So, do we want a trophy off of it, or can we just do whatever?” Hamuko gave her Evoker a contemplative glance. “Because there’s something I’d sort of like to show you…”

“Anything valuable would have been burnt off by now,” Souji shrugged.

“Okay, then.” Surt vanished, and she held the silver object to her temple once again. “Let’s take a leaf out of Theo’s book, okay, Messiah? Megidolaon!”

And with that, what was left of the dying insect went up in a giant white explosion.

“...And I thought Naoto-kun could be scary,” Yukiko commented. “At least she was-”

“Serious about it? Cognizant of the fact that she was basically throwing around magical nukes? Somewhat responsible by nature?”

“All of the above, really.”

“I have not see you use that Persona before,” Zen noted. “Is that what you wanted to show us?”

“Yeah. Messiah’s my new Ultimate… for a given definition of new, anyway… they were four months apart…” She settled into mumbling to herself, occasionally glaring at the empty space right next to her. Souji, Rei, and Yukiko looked at her quizzically, while Zen just nodded.

“Yes, that explains it.”

* * *

  
  


“So, when do you plan to attempt the warp?” Lili asked.

“We don’t,” Hamuko replied. “I want to actually see what’s on the fifth floor.”

“Really? But nobody ever comes back from there.”

“There’s no telling what trip to Yggdrasil is the one you won’t come back from,” She pointed out. “And it’s not just that, but in life in general. All anyone can do is take whatever cautions you can and pray for the best.”

“Huh, that makes a surprising amount of sense.”

“I’m speaking from experience.” She shrugged and leaned back. “Least this time I don’t have an overwhelming amount of power to blind me to reality.”

Lili didn’t ask Hamuko anything else that day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, at first this was going to be a much bigger deal, but... well, as goes my gameplay experience: Armor Pierce ,Focus Chant, Hex, Flame Link, Flame Bomb, Fireball, and then Rei shot it. It was probably a very good thing for that Toxipede that ailments don't stack, I think it was hit with Curse last? Maybe? There were a lot of ailments...
> 
> Geomagnetism, in this story, is basically code for Yggdrasil subtly fucking with physics in the surrounding area. I can sort of keep the compass straight across floors, but even that requires it actually being a physical set of stairs and not Yggdrasil teleporting you, which I could fully believe.


	15. Shuffle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Costume party?
> 
> Costume party!

“We need a break,” Hamuko declared. Her friends looked at her in surprise.

“Really? You want to take time off now?” Souji asked, shocked. “Now that we’re doing so well? Weren’t you the one constantly going on about momentum?”

“I do remember you saying something like that,” Zen agreed. “And I am unsure as to any suitable pastimes around here.”

“Yes, well…” She trailed off, touching her left wrist. “I have been… informed… that going on like this might not be particularly healthy, and that even if I still feel the need to run myself into the ground like this, it isn’t fair to all of you.”

Zen glanced… not quite at her, but in her general direction. “In those exact words?”

“Does it matter?” Rei asked. “We get to take a break!”

“...No, I guess it doesn’t.”

“I suppose I could go look a few things up…” Souji mused. “After tarot taught me so much about reading people and the future, I’d like to see what the people in this world do to analyze each other and the world. Yuki-senpai, you interested?”

Hamuko shook her head. “No thanks. There’s a lot of things that people really aren’t meant to know, and that’s amongst them, at least in my experience. When you can tell something bad’s coming just from looking at the cards, and can’t see any way to stop it… I’d rather not go through that again.”

Rei tilted her head. “Again?”

“This… has something to do with whatever happened to Aragaki-san, doesn’t it?” Yukiko was quiet, not looking directly at Hamuko. Then again, nobody was. “Ken-kun told us that… that he’d died... but other than that…”

“...I keep forgetting how observant you can be.” The Guild’s leader took a moment to collect herself, and then looked up again. “It’s one thing to know that someone’s living on borrowed time. It was another thing entirely to realize just how badly the deck was stacked against him. It didn’t turn out quite as badly as expected, but given the circumstances… I’m not sure it matters.”

“...No, I guess it doesn’t,” Yukiko agreed. “...Sorry about… you know… bringing it up…” Behind the raven-haired girl, Souji had started to write a few things down, paused, and crossed out half of the lines he’d already written.

“It’s fine. I really should be past it now, but when you have years with nothing to do but think… it didn’t help. I’ll be fine, though. Eventually.”

Zen glanced up once more, but didn’t say anything. Nobody did, and the conversation ended right there.

* * *

  
  


“This is all your fault…” Souji grumbled, tossing a red sash at his girlfriend.

“What makes you say that?” Yukiko asked.

“If you hadn’t mentioned Aragaki-san, Yuki-senpai wouldn’t have gotten upset. If Yuki-senpai wasn’t upset, Rei wouldn’t have suggested that we all do something to cheer her up. And if Rei hadn’t made that suggestion, we would not be in this situation.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure of that…” She mused. “Hamuko-san really does seem to love dressing up. Remember all the outfits she had back then?”

“I’m more impressed she could get the others to wear them,” He admitted. “Iori-san, Aigis-san, and Aragaki-san I could understand, but Takeba-senpai and Kirijo-san…” They both paused to imagine just how such a thing could have ever occurred.

After a moment, however, Yukiko shook her head. “You know, it’s not all that strange, given what you could convince Yosuke-kun and Naoto-kun to wear. And I’m surprised Kanji-kun never had any flashbacks, really…” They both laughed, for a moment, at the memory of Yosuke’s reaction to Kanji dressing as his Shadow.

“Well, yes, but I paid them to do it.”

“That explains a lot… it’s not so fun to be on the other side of this, is it?” There was a hint of gratification in her voice, and Souji groaned.

“It’s not like you never took out the gag glasses on your own…” His protest, however, went ignored.

* * *

  
  


“How do I look?” Rei twirled around, causing her patterned hat to slip down, knocking off her lensless red glasses. “Oh, not again!”

“...Maybe we should replace that hat with something smaller,” Hamuko muttered, picking up the scarlet frames. “Besides that, though, you really do look cute.”

“You think so?”

“Of course! Now, do me a favor, and skip out right in front of Zen-kun with this on. He’ll love it.”

“You sure?” Rei asked, taking back the offered glasses and sliding them back on. “He’s not exactly…”

“Trust me, I am speaking from experience here. Of course, ask a guy what he thinks about your outfit, and he’ll freeze up every time, but that has its own sort of charm to it.” She paused, before adding, “Also, this is just about the only way I can think of to get Zen-kun to visibly emote.”

“He really isn’t too good at that, is he…? But why do you want him to?”

“Just call it simple curiosity. And settling a bet. But mostly the first one.”

* * *

  
  


“...And there we go!” Hamuko finished fiddling around with the buttons on her oversized lab coat, for once stepping out of the inn wearing something other than the Gekkoukan High school uniform. “See, I’m not just making everyone else suffer!”

“It’s not suffering, though,” Rei said, while also biting into a loaf of bread from the bag. “It’s actually kinda fun!”

“Girls…” Souji sighed, removing the mittens from the velvet blue winter outfit that his leader had dug up somewhere, fastening them to his coat with the Jack Frost pin he’d been given.

Yukiko, who had settled on a sweater and earmuffs, turned to him. “What was that, Souji-kun?”

“Oh, I didn’t mean you, Yukiko. Just… Rei and Yuki-senpai may have gone a bit far this time. It might be midwinter, but I’ve never needed this many layers before. We’ve always gone just fine without them.”

“You have,” She pointed out. “I actually find this temperature rather nice.”

“That’s because you have Sumeo-Okami… hold on a moment.” His eyes unfocused for a second, and he started to seem much more comfortable.

“I am unsure why you were complaining in the first place,” Zen noted, trying not to trip over his large purple cape. “And, Leader, are you sure this was a good idea?”

“Sorry, Zen-kun,” Hamuko laughed. “It’s just that this was the closest they had to your size. You can cut it short later, if you’d like.”

“I’m not the only one concerned about how she knows our measurements, right?” Souji checked. Yukiko shrugged.

“Well, none of us in Inaba ever complained about you knowing ours… though Rise-chan probably shouldn’t count in that.”

“Yes, but I was buying armor for all of us-” A breastplate was dropped in front of him. “...Really?”

“Just about all of SEES brought up the same thing at some point or another. Mitsuru-senpai, at least, couldn’t complain because she was the one who gave me all those records. Apparently, she thought I could handle the expenses of the entire group.”

Rei glanced at her. “And you didn’t go bankrupt?”

“I was not that bad!” The rest of the group broke out into laughter, aside from Zen, who still wasn’t trying to hold back his smile. “Really, do none of you have any faith in me?”

“Not when it comes to money,” Souji quipped. “But now I know why Kirijo-san was so upset at you spending everything before you left on okonomiyaki.”

“Look, if the time warp had actually returned us to Tartarus as I’d expected, we’d have been able to make up the difference on Shadows. Besides, it was that or listen to Junpei at the karaoke booth.”

Yukiko shuddered. “I should have taken the okonomiyaki…”

“Yeah, it was delicious!”

“Rei, you’re not helping.”

“Now… to Yggdrasil! Forward march!”

“Yuki-senpai, no!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...I don't even know anymore.
> 
> This is probably going to be the last chapter taking place from an entirely objective POV. In hindsight, this experiment should probably have been conducted on a story without Persona Users. It makes it hard to get into the actual story.
> 
> Also, for the rest of the story, feel free to imagine them wearing these outfits... as best you can, anyway. Just... whatever you do... do not tell Souji that his outfit was based on a female portrait.


	16. A Visionary Approach

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Souji has gotten used to having Izanagi-no-Okami's powers available on demand, as has everyone else.
> 
> This is not necessarily a good thing.

Iorys had a very odd climate, Souji thought. Of course, that might have been due to the presence of Yggdrasil- everywhere else had weather predictable for midwinter, while the Tutelary Forest was still as green as could be. At least he wasn’t the type of person to care about little things like fog anymore- he had Izanagi-no-Okami to thank for that.

Either way, no matter how foggy the morning, breakfast was still there to be served at about the same time every day, and it was good food that he didn’t have to cook. After spending three weeks on the road with only Yukiko for company, he’d quickly learned to appreciate that luxury.

He did like getting up early, though. Besides the view of the town that only he could see clearly, it was nice to go outside, and enjoy the morning air, no matter what time of year it was- if the temperature was uncomfortable, just switch to Black Frost. Even if he sometimes forgot it was there, it was still a very good utility Persona to have.

“Come on, it can’t be that hard… Agi!” Souji paused. Yeah, that was definitely Hamuko’s room. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d heard her so frustrated with anything. She was generally cheerful outside of battle, and quite happy to throw around a Velvet-scale Megidolaon inside of it. Which tended to kill everything within a certain radius.

This was something worth putting off his walk a bit for.

“Um… Yuki-senpai?” He asked, knocking on her door. “Are you trying to set the inn on fire?” Because he sort of wanted the place they lived to remain intact.

“If I was,” The other Wild Card stated, opening the door, “I would not be attempting a simple Agi.” She was fully dressed, and her hair was done up, which told him that she’d been awake for quite some time. If she’d slept at all.

Given that it was Hamuko, he wouldn’t be all that surprised if she hadn’t.

There were things she wasn’t telling him, of course. Things he could figure out on his own- she wasn’t carrying her Evoker, and she was always successful when summoning with one, which left two possibilities. Either she was trying to call a Persona without using it, or she was attempting to channel. Neither of which would have surprised him.

Given that he could see past her, to a candle set out on the desk, Souji assumed it was the latter. “Well, if you’re not planning arson, why are you trying to use fire spells?”

It was a few moments before Hamuko answered. “...Mitsuru-senpai made it seem so easy. Akihiko, too, once he’d figured out he was doing it. And it was, for a while, but…” But then whatever made her lose her resolve had happened.

He shrugged. Channeling had never been a big deal for him. Sure, sometimes he’d slightly tap into Kohryu’s strength, and it was his true Persona’s ability that let him see through fog and the lies of others, but he’d always figured that passives were simply easier than active magic.

“Well, try not to melt anything you’ll have to pay for later. And please don’t attempt any Almighty spells.”

“Vice Leader, how dumb do you think I am?”

“I’d say more irresponsible…” Why did they follow her again? Right, because he’d picked paper, and she was incredibly charismatic. Add in the fact that she was the one Zen and Rei turned to… He’d never had a chance.

Souji decided to head out on his walk, before he let the fact of Yuki Hamuko being a more popular leader than him get to him too badly.

* * *

  
  


“There seems to be more fog this morning than usual,” Zen commented at breakfast. Rei nodded.

“Yeah, it looks like a milky soup! Oh, Zen, can we get soup later!?”

“If that is what you’d like.”

“That might have to wait until we’re back from the Labyrinth,” Hamuko said. “I think the fourth floor is high enough up Yggdrasil that there won’t be too much of a problem, unless it’s covered in water or something.”

“Souji-kun can clear it away if it’s too much trouble,” Yukiko pointed out. Souji sighed.

“That’s energy-intensive, and it works best on supernatural fog. Yggdrasil is not that eldritch.” He hoped. But he was also sure he’d exited stairs in the exact opposite direction of when he started climbing, while walking in a completely straight line, so he couldn’t be entirely sure.

“But you can still do it, though.”

“Let’s save that for a last resort.” True, he enjoyed using Izanagi-no-Okami, and he rarely got the opportunity to, but mundane fog just needed a few hours to clear, even if they planned to head directly to the Labyrinth that day- which they did and could.

Souji wasn’t a big fan of Geomagnetism studies for much the same reasons as Hamuko. After spending a year connecting with people, his World made up of shifting emotions and loud voices, it was almost impossible to simplify it to simple numbers on a piece of paper. Add that to the otherworldly nature of Yggdrasil, and he could safely say that he preferred theoretical metaphysics. Those were much simpler.

“It’s still early, so maybe the problem will resolve itself,” Hamuko shrugged. Zen glanced at her.

“Has that ever happened to you?”

“I used to be stuck to a giant metaphysical door. Now I’m not. I never thought the apocalypse could actually fix anything, but… here we are.”

“I would’ve preferred if the world didn’t end, though,” Rei said. “Sure, I didn’t really get to enjoy it, but everyone else…” Right. Subjects they couldn’t avoid forever. Such as their friends.

And, sure, it wasn’t impossible that they might have found a way to safety- they’d managed, after all, and some of them hadn’t even been alive then- it was a big universe, and nothing said that everyone would end up in the same one from the start. This was just the one the five of them had an open invitation to.

Even if they’d only seen one Yggdrasil tree, rather than the myriads they’d been promised. It was most likely semantics, anyway.

And, past a certain point, it didn’t matter. This was just Souji’s life now, as much as he hated to admit it. But at least he hadn’t lost everyone, so he could still live with it.

“Let’s not talk about that for now,” Hamuko said. “Actually, new rule- no serious talk over breakfast.”

Yukiko shrugged. “That sounds sensible enough.” Nobody really felt the need to disagree on that.

* * *

  
  


“‘Not unless it’s covered in water or something’, huh?” Rei turned to Hamuko, who sighed.

“Look, I expect water to run downhill, okay!? I forgot that this place and physics aren’t necessarily on speaking terms.”

Yukiko reached over and tugged on Souji’s hand. “This may take a while.” He nodded. Hamuko wasn’t the type of person to rant, so if she was getting into one… he wanted to maintain a safe distance, just in case.

Like Rei said, the fourth floor of the Labyrinth had several interconnected ponds and rivers. In fact, he’d say that this part of the forest was mostly water, though there were multiple dry paths through the floor, and just as many that were half-submerged. Between the trees and the large amount of plant life, even with his ability to see through the fog, Souji didn’t think he’d easily be able to see anything trying to sneak up on them.

Of course, with all the water and plant life, they probably didn’t have to worry about being unable to hear their enemies, either.

“Come on, let’s go this way,” He suggested, leading his girlfriend away from the giant stone door and down one of the drier pathways. “It seems to be safest.”

“Can you really tell that?”

“...Well, it’s got the most open space. And you’ll probably be able to see better.” That was sort of a concern. Particularly when the area was so unnaturally quiet.

“...Actually, I could probably burn some of it away, everything’s damp enough that it should be safe.”

“I’m not sure, but I think there are better uses of our powers than that.” And yes, he said this with full knowledge that they made a habit of using Agi to light their campfires. He still wasn’t sure how Hamuko could be that frivolous with magical powers, but that was just how things were now, so he accepted it.

...He really needed a better way to handle the fact that his life was bizarre at times. More often than not. And he’d volunteered for more of this because it was the one clue they had.

“Oh, look over there!” Souji turned to where Yukiko was pointing. “What is that, Souji?”

“It looks like some kind of dead tree.” But not really, because there was a giant hole in it. Souji found himself walking up to it, Yukiko easily keeping pace. “It’s probably a den of some sort… yeah, definitely.” His eyes weren’t as good with the dark as they were with the mist hanging over the forest, but it was close enough to make out a set of familiar shapes. “Do you remember how Yuki-senpai dealt with the last leech.”

Yukiko nodded. “Yes, she set it on fire. Are there more in there?”

“Four of them. I think we can leave them be, though-” A flash of blue, and the tree started burning.

Really, he wasn’t sure what he’d expected.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hamuko: Why is there a bonfire in the distance?  
> Souji & Yukiko: ...No reason.
> 
>  
> 
> The fourth floor, I have decided, is the place where Yggdrasil starts to show how little it cares for such mundane concepts as 'reality' and 'physical possibilities'. As well as being the local water level because that's where all the lobsters are and random rivers and lakes are easier to get across then 'oh hey more statues'.
> 
> Of course, it's not going to break from physical reality entirely... that's for the later Strata.


	17. A Fruitful Venture

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Take a monkey, and a tree, and several apples of varying freshness. Mix in philosophical discussion and theoretical metaphysics. Add a dash of introspection into the very, very strange life of Seta Souji.

Thankfully for Souji, it was not a cloudy day, and the sun soon burned away the mists that hung over the fourth floor of Yggdrasil. He was getting tired of directing everyone, and was actually glad that they could see how beautiful this part of the Labyrinth was, especially now with the sunlight reflecting off of the water.

“You know, sometimes I wish I owned a camera,” Hamuko commented. “Not even here, I just- in general.”

“I do not exist just to charge batteries,” He grumbled in response.

“No, you also exist to make out with Yukiko-chan.” The worst part was, he couldn’t think of a way to respond to that without making Yukiko upset. Such were the perils of his current friendship with his fellow Wild Card.

...Was this what it felt like to be Yosuke? He sort of wished his Magician was still there, so he could apologize to him. Of course, that probably wouldn’t change anything… He was still too much of a Fool to do otherwise.

“Hey, Vice Leader?” Privately rolling his eyes at the persistence of the title- which was admittedly partially his own fault- he turned to Rei, gesturing for her to continue. “Do you think you’ll move to fishing here since there’s so much water?”

“Maybe.” He shrugged the question off, since there wasn’t much actually meant by it. “I’ll figure that out once we can see how strong the monsters here are.”

“As a general rule, the monsters here do not use magic,” Zen pointed out. “And a number of them have incredible weaknesses to it. For someone like you, they cannot be very strong.”

“I don’t think this is on the same level as clearing fog, though,” Yukiko observed. “Fighting generally requires some use of hands.”

“That’s the one complaint I have about my Evoker,” Hamuko agreed. “But even if I wanted to call a Persona without one, I wouldn’t know where to start.” Which Souji thought was slightly concerning, but it wasn’t really his place to call her out on it. He wasn’t even a Social Link.

Well, not a main one, anyway. The Fool Social Link was strange like that, a web of people shared between the both of them and including each other, one which hadn’t dropped off like most of the rest at the end of the world because a part of it was still there. Not as strong as it had been before, but still stronger than the one Souji had shared with Kou and Daisuke, which was odd-but-not as Zen and Rei barely counted as part of it, less even than the other half of the group had been, though they still did count, in some small way.

But that net didn’t count. It had always felt less of a bond between people and more a pact between allies, meaningful through nothing but numbers and purpose.

“We could try to teach you,” Yukiko suggested instead, as though they’d actually bothered to learn the mechanics of their souls and weren’t just going on instinct, which might also have been how Hamuko did it, except her instinct was to point an imitation gun at her head.

Hamuko paused as if in consideration, which was more than Souji’d expected of her, with her odd sense of pride and insistence of sticking to one mask above the rest, her teasing nature.

“That… could you do that?” She asked, adjusting her sleeves. “I mean, I can’t promise I’d make a habit of it or anything, but it’d be good to know, for emergencies.”

He supposed it wouldn’t be hopeless. Her friends had managed to learn, after all, at least some of them. But they still didn’t know where to start, so it almost didn’t matter.

He really needed to stop letting Yukiko speak for him.

* * *

  
  


It took no more than fifteen minutes for Souji to figure out Hamuko wasn’t really getting it. Knowing her, she’d brought up the topic in the first place so the walk wouldn’t be so unnervingly quiet, and wasn’t even paying attention.

Yukiko didn’t seem to notice, going through her own theories- each one more outlandish than the last. He’d stop it, if not for the fact that hearing her voice was reassuring, in the whole load of nothing that was this unnaturally peaceful forest. Really. Nothing had even tried to attack them yet, and it was kind of freaking him out.

Nearby, the water rippled for a moment, and he turned to face it, grip tightening on the Blade of Totsuka. Nothing. Maybe he was a bit paranoid, but he’d taken the challenge of running up Void Quest with nothing but a set of golf clubs before, he knew how dangerous the world could be.

But it didn’t matter if he couldn’t see anything- if it wasn’t anywhere in his sight, it probably didn’t matter just yet- so he turned his attention back to the girls.

“And- you aren’t even listening to me, are you!?” Yukiko complained, finally catching on to Hamuko’s disinterest.

“I was… well, there was some attention there. Enough.” Hamuko didn’t even try not to sound distracted. Souji wasn’t even sure what would distract her, with the kind of stories she told… their leader was the kind of person to live a very interesting life.

“I don’t think there was a lot of it, though…” Rei mumbled around… was that the last of the muffins? Sure, he was surprised they’d lasted this long, even if the local black hole had an actual stomach capacity now, but still…

Zen sighed. “Rei, eating will attract the animals.”

“What animals?” She responded. “I don’t see any.”

“You know, this feels sort of like a horror movie,” Yukiko commented. “You know, just before the monster strikes? Everything’s quiet, and we haven’t even seen any turtles.”

Hamuko groaned. “Yukiko-chan, did you really have to say that? Now I’ll be looking over my shoulder all day!”

“Isn’t that just what she does?” Rei pointed out, swallowing the last few pieces of muffin. Nobody could really find a good response to that, and the conversation died there.

* * *

  
  


Eventually, the Masked Guild approached a place from which came many thudding and splashing sounds. “What… is that?” Zen asked.

“It sounds like someone is throwing questionably ripe apples at things, and they are bouncing off of those things and into the water,” Hamuko replied. The others all turned to her. “Look, I had a weird childhood, okay!?”

“We already knew that,” Rei pointed out. “...Hey, look, that’s a pretty big tree!”

“Not as big as, well…” Souji trailed off, and gestured to the land around them. “Though… it doesn’t feel like we’re climbing a tree here.”

Yukiko nodded. “It’s just like a nature trail.” A few more steps, and they could easily see the flying fruit. Once they were even closer, it was pretty obviously a monkey throwing the apples. Or, well, something that looked like a monkey. You never really knew, in Yggdrasil.

As soon as the monkey noticed them, the Masked Guild found themselves being pelted with rotten fruit. Somehow, that was not as surprising as it should have been.

“Why isn’t it throwing any of the good ones?” Rei complained, reaching and trying to grab for a flying fruit.

Souji sighed. “Rei, if you know they’re not good, why are you trying to catch them?”

“There’s a chance!”

“There are a number of apples on the tree that are good to eat,” Zen commented. “However, it is unlikely that we will be able to obtain one.”

“Try me,” Souji grinned before stepping forward.

“...Vice Leader?” Hamuko paused, before continuing. “Are you feeling all right?”

“Souji-kun gets like that sometimes,” Yukiko shrugged. “It’s normally small things that don’t get a lot of attention, like fishing.”

The silver-haired Fool, meanwhile, kept staring up into the tree. After thinking on it for a moment, he pantomimed a throwing gesture.

The next apple hit Hamuko on the head. “Hey! What was that for!? He’s the one messing around, not me!”

“Yuki-senpai, I don’t think it cares.” Not one to give up with a single failure, he tried again.

This time, the retaliatory throw knocked Zen to the ground. Probably not a good sign.

Souji kept trying, with varied results. The one thrown at Yukiko burned to a crisp due to her reflexive summoning, Rei actually managed to catch an apple- though it was rotten- and the space next to Hamuko gained an odd chill to it, only for said chill to vanish as half a dozen apples soared through it.

That probably meant nothing.

Sighing, Souji gave up on the completely diplomatic approach, summoning Scathatch, the Ultimate Persona that had been with him for the longest due to him actually seeking out the fusion materials. Sometimes he wondered if Hamuko had ever felt a similar pull to one of her own Personas, but always shrugged it off. After all, due to the very nature of their powers, it was a rather personal question.

“I highly suggest that you give us a good apple now,” He stated, hoping that the absurd power of his highest expression of the Priestess Arcana would be enough for the monkey to get the picture.

It did, tossing a shining apple right into his hands before running off into the trees. He’d feel bad about it if it hadn’t been so rude to them.

“That,” Zen said, “Was a horrible waste of five minutes.” Oh, hey, he seemed to be opening up again. That was good. Souji hadn’t helped to coax him into social interactions only for him to withdraw again.

And, well, it had been half a year, at this point. It was about time they started to recover.

As they walked deeper into the maze, Souji noticed a small black feather floating on the breeze, that vanished once he turned to get a better look.

Somehow, this didn’t surprise him in the slightest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This floor isn't going to show off much in the way of random encounters. That gets in the way of the Guild realizing just how eldritch the place they've volunteered to explore is.
> 
> Admittedly, a random encounter would help to go into detail about just what is up with Hamuko... but that can wait for a bit.


	18. A Dance With Stone Statues

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Part of the Guild ends up separated from each other. Again. Hopefully, this doesn't start to become a trend or anything.
> 
> Particularly when the Labyrinth is starting to once more show signs of life. And it's far from what Souji had originally wanted to see.

“Does anyone else find it odd that we haven’t been attacked by anything yet?” Hamuko asked. “I mean, besides the apples?”

“That is kind of strange,” Souji agreed. He thought maybe it was the water, the fact that they’d entered the Labyrinth earlier than usual that morning, or maybe just the fact that it was midwinter. Not that he’d share any of that, of course. “But the fog’s all gone now, so even you can see that there isn’t anything there.”

Really. It had just been forest and water the whole time they’d been walking, even though prior floors had always had at least one monster show up. He tried not to think about it too much.

“Oh, there’s something,” Yukiko stated, pointing forwards to a fork in the road. “Up ahead.”

What Yukiko had pointed out was an odd flat stone contraption in the ground with several protruding ridges, in the shape of a perfect square. There was a statue on the other side of it, standing in front of a tree. It seemed very old, but as the various doors on the floor previous had proven, that did not preclude it still working as intended… whatever that intent was.

“Huh.” Hamuko tapped the square with the edge of her naginata. Nothing happened. “What do you think this is?”

“Maybe it’s a hunting trap meant for those bears we saw,” Rei suggested.

“Wouldn’t those be on the previous floor?” Zen pointed out. “There is no sign of any magic in this object’s origin, aside from the obvious preservation spells.”

“They could have used to be here,” She shrugged. “And then they moved away so they’d stop being eaten. You could probably get a lot of meat off a bear.”

“Wouldn’t that require being able to kill it, though?” Yukiko paused. “I mean, I suppose that’s what the traps would be for, but… I don’t know, that just doesn’t seem right.”

Inwardly, Souji sighed. Of course they’d end up going off on a tangent about that. Ever since he and Yukiko had come across Zen and Rei, not three days had gone by without at least one in-depth discussion of something involving food. Maybe, if he was lucky, it would improve Yukiko’s cooking.

...He probably wasn’t that lucky.

“It doesn’t seem to be dangerous, at least,” Hamuko decided, walking across the stone to the statue on the other side. “Though this looks different from the other ones, I-” She reached forward to tap it, and the statue slid to the side, a massive rock appearing from the contraption and blocking the path.

“...Well, at least we know what it does now?” Yukiko tried. Souji just shook his head.

“I don’t think that was ever the real problem here,” He said, before calling over the rock, “Yuki-senpai, are you all right?”

“I’m fine!” He heard her shout back. “But the statue’s stuck in place- I can’t move it again! We’ll have to find somewhere else to meet up! And don’t call me senpai!”

“Are you sure you’ll be okay!?” Not that he didn’t believe in her or anything, but it was probably better to ask, just in case.

“I’ve handled worse. Don’t worry!” Souji heard footsteps- that was probably her running off into the forest, and then nothing. He sighed. As much as he preferred taking the leadership position, this really wasn’t how he wanted to be pushed into it.

“...Well, you heard her. Let’s go.”

* * *

  
  


It was several minutes later that the group came across the first signs of life on the labyrinth floor. The path they had chosen eventually led to a stretch covered in mud, similar to the one on the first floor, which showed signs of having recently been disturbed by something with large pincers.

“Nice to know we’re not alone in this forest,” Souji commented, half-sarcastically. On one hand, it meant that their worries about being jumped were justified. On the other… it meant that their fears of being jumped were justified.

For a moment, he considered summoning Kaguya and scanning ahead, before dismissing the possibility. While his Navigational Persona’s sensory capabilities no longer left him entirely overwhelmed, he’d never willingly been a scanner type to begin with, and didn’t plan on starting now.

“That or it happened on its own,” Rei shrugged. “Like when we found Leader.”

“I thought we’d already established that it was dark enough you couldn’t really see anything,” He pointed out.

“Well, yeah… but it would have been cool, right?”

Zen sighed. “Rei, I can say with confidence, our leader does not possess an autonomous fruit knife. I do not believe such a thing even exists.”

“...We need to make that a thing. It’d be ready to eat so much faster that way.”

“Rei. No.”

“Huh? What’s this?” Souji looked up at hearing Yukiko’s voice to see his girlfriend standing in the middle of the mud, holding up what seemed to be a shard of a shattered mask. “It has a III on it.”

III… that, on a mask, normally signified a Shadow of the Empress Arcana. Of course, ever since the Masked Guild’s arrival in this new world, there hadn’t been a single Shadow in sight. Unless they were to count the Personas. Or Zen and Rei. But they didn’t have masks, and could go into the Velvet Room, so Souji didn’t.

“That… that could be a problem. If that is what I think it is, anyway.”

“It appears to be a Shadow mask,” Zen confirmed.

“Yeah, that’s what I was afraid of.”

“Is it really that bad, though?” Yukiko asked. “I mean, if we’re looking for a god, seeing Shadows means we’re getting closer, right?”

Zen shook his head. “That… is not how it works, unless something’s changed in the past twelve years and nobody thought to tell me.”

“I mean, to be fair, it’s not like you were doing your job anyway…” Souji pointed out. “...Do you think I should call Yuki-senpai to tell her about this?”

“Why?” Rei asked. “Leader’s strong, she can handle Shadows. And you’d probably just end up fighting again.” Okay, that was a good point.

* * *

  
  


The first sign that anything was wrong was a loud splash. “We must be getting closer to a river,” Yukiko remarked. Souji nodded, though he privately thought it was a bit of a shame- they’d been walking through one of the rare dry bits.

“There’s probably something there,” He added, again considering calling Kaguya before figuring that it could wait until he actually knew there was an enemy to fight. And, really, he’d managed things without a dedicated scanner before, this would be no different.

“Should we prepare for combat?” Zen asked. Souji shook his head.

“No. Not yet. If we stay well hidden, we can possibly avoid it.” Maybe.

The next splash was accompanied by a loud squawk from some sort of bird, which didn’t make much sense because there weren’t a lot of birds that appeared in the Labyrinth. In fact, Souji couldn’t recall having seen a single one, which made some sort of sense when he remembered that they were technically still inside a large tree, even if they had a strangely clear view of the sky.

Honestly, though, he still wouldn’t have given it a second thought, if not for the fact that he recognized that birdcall.

Sure enough, when they came across the source of the sound, there was a Venus Eagle fighting with a giant crawfish. The Garu the Shadow threw at the FOE did approximately nothing, and it was quickly cut down by the larger monster’s claws, dissolving into goop that quickly mixed with the mud until there was nothing left.

The crustacean then proceeded to turn and dive back into the river. Within moments, there were no signs of life around the four of them aside from themselves.

“...I guess that explains why we haven’t seen anything,” Was what Souji said once he found his voice again. “They’re all hiding underwater.” He supposed that meant he wouldn’t be fishing there. He wanted to catch things that were edible, not… whatever that was.

Actually… he could figure out what it was, couldn't he? It only took a few moments focus before Kaguya stood behind him, and less than a minute to shake off the dizziness of having his senses expanded like that.

By that point, the crawfish was already far away from him. A fast swimmer, it seemed. There were only two things he could properly get from it, with his lack of talent for scanning- the fact that it preferred to be in the water when possible, and that it had a crippling weakness to electricity.

...Well, in the worst-case scenario, he’d probably be fine. He wasn’t sure just how many volts Ziodyne was, but all things considered, it was probably enough.

“Good news,” He started, because he needed to try and think positive or else he’d start to panic about whatever the fifth floor would have in store for them, “We should be safe as long as we stay away from the water.”

“That could be difficult,” Zen stated, gesturing at the marsh around them. “Though, I am confused as to the geography here. I was under the impression that water was supposed to flow downwards, and yet…”

“Yes, that is a bit confusing,” Yukiko agreed. Rei looked pensive for a moment, before turning to Souji and asking him a question.

“Vice Leader, do you think you should warn Leader about the water?” That… was actually a good idea. The possible presence of Shadows was one thing, but creatures that could strike them down with a single slash of their claws were quite another.

After all, only one of them would be easily defeated. Closing his eyes so that he could focus on one sense at a time, he cast out into the Labyrinth, looking for Hamuko’s unique Arcana configuration.

Fool, Death, Universe. Admittedly, the last one was the only one he really needed to search for, but it was always best to be safe. Once he found her, it was a simple matter to project his words to her location. And his ears, because he didn’t want to go Rise’s path and just read everyone’s minds. That would be rude.

“It’s not like there’s anything to worry about,” Hamuko’s voice filtered through. Curious as to who she could be talking to, Souji tried to sense if there was anyone nearby. For a moment, he thought he had something, but it vanished before he could get a fix on it. “Really, it’s just- Vice Leader, are you spying on me?”

“Of course not!”

“Then why did you respond?” He was sure she was grinning now, it seemed like the kind of thing she would do in this situation.

“Because I was trying to warn you about something. It’s important.”

“You say that about everything.”

“There’s FOEs in the water, and Shadows in the air. I’m not sure if you’ve come across anything on land-”

“Yeah, there’s these vines, you remember those, right? Well, those happened, but I’m fine now, so…” Hamuko’s voice picked up speed, as though she were afraid of something. Which was odd, there were no nearby presences.

“I take it you handled them yourself?” He checked, not even waiting for a response. “Well, that’s what I wanted to tell you. Don’t go in the water and you should be fine. And maybe look up every now and again.”

“So, just do what I’ve been doing? Got it. I’ll try and meet up with everyone sometime soon. See you, then!” And, well, that was the telepathic equivalent of hanging up on someone, so Souji ended the communication right there and then.

Right then, getting the people he was currently with through the forest was much more important.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next time, we get a chapter from Hamuko's perspective! It's about time, really.
> 
> Yes, the Labyrinth's various blob monsters are going to be replaced by a variety of Mayas. Because I can, mostly.


	19. Soul Activation Phrase

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For most people, being lost in a deadly maze would be their worst nightmare. For Hamuko, it's been her reality for longer than she'd care to admit. Being a bit more than human helps, in her case, but only so much.
> 
> Among other things, it's rather annoying for her when her actions have unforeseen consequences. One of these days, she really needs to work on that...

For a few moments after her conversation with Souji ended, Hamuko simply glared at the wall in her way. It didn’t disappear, but it sort of made her feel better. Sort of.

Still, she wasn’t going to get anything productive out of that, so she turned and started down the path in front of her. At least it was a relatively nice day to be walking in the forest… midwinter, and all. Sure, everything was a lot more pleasant than it would be elsewhere, but…

It felt wrong. And Hamuko knew what wrong felt like- she’d grown up in the Dark Hour’s unnatural shades, and took some small piece of it for herself. Not so much to make her decidedly inhuman, but, well, enough.

Maybe. Some days, she wasn’t entirely sure about that. Though the brightly shining thread drifting through her consciousness didn’t exactly help there. Its presence was a good thing, this she’d decided long ago, but at no point had she ever claimed to have a perfect sense of priorities.

“...This is why I don’t like being alone,” She muttered. “Introspection never ends well.” The thread tugged at her, with a hint of offense. “Well, okay, I’m not entirely alone, but it only really counts if you come out and actually talk to me.”

There was no response. Hamuko shook her head and stopped walking for a moment. “Come on, please? Being able to share emotions only helps so much, you know.”

The first reaction was, of course, amusement. Which was good- that was really the easiest way for her to get a genuine smile out of him. When she could see him. Which she still couldn’t. “Shinji…”

“You know, I’m pretty sure the dead are supposed to rest in peace and shit, you’re making that kinda difficult,” Aragaki Shinjiro grumbled as he faded into existence, though the somewhat overcharged Social Link between them told Hamuko that he was still more or less enjoying himself.

“It’s not like you were doing that to begin with,” She pointed out. “Also, only pretty sure? Between the two of us, you’re the one who actually made it to an afterlife!”

“Well, I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but by the time we were through with him, Zen wasn’t exactly the most professional deity in the world.”

“I think I figured that out when his girlfriend convinced him to use a ghost as a courier, yes.” She was grateful for it, true, but Hamuko was also aware that it probably broke at least two rules, maybe even more. She wasn’t sure. Hosting Death made her different to most people, but it didn’t actually give her the rulebook.

Probably a good thing. Her sanity was questionable enough without actual tomes of eldritch lore added to the experience.

Shinjiro’s response was to mutter something about how that letter was never meant to be delivered in actual irritation, though Hamuko didn’t listen to it too closely. Having him by her side was good enough.

It had to be. Because as solid as he looked, when she playfully took a swipe at him after being ignored in favor of his mutterings for a full minute, her hand passed through his shoulder like nothing was there.

That was how things worked. There was exactly one non-ghostly thing in the world that Shinji was able to touch, and it wasn’t her. And despite the fact that it had been that way since their arrival in this new world, it still hurt just as much as it had the first time.

And she knew he could feel it too, because it was impossible to tie two souls together as tightly as they had without being able to register hurts this deep, particularly when one of them was already telempathic by nature. But she wasn’t going to let herself think about that bit too hard, because it’d just send both of them into a self-reinforcing spiral of depression and then they’d never get out of the forest.

...Which, admittedly, would technically solve the problem, but it would also be sort of pathetic, when it was only the fourth floor. “I always think it’ll get better the next time,” She sighed, “But it never does.”

“It’s better than nothing,” Shinjiro suggested. Which sort of helped, but it also really didn’t.

“Maybe. But I still wish I could hug you.”

“...Hamuko, hugs are not the answer to everything. We’ve discussed this.”

“Well, they should be,” She pouted, barely noticing how quickly the pain faded now that she had a distraction.

“No, they shouldn’t. If they were, what would I be able to do for you?” ...Okay, that was a very good point. It might not have been perfect, but Hamuko liked having Shinji around. Being able to talk to him was… well, it wasn’t everything she wanted, but for a while, it was probably the most she’d be able to get.

“Fair enough. Come on, I bet we can make it to the stairs before the others do.” Mostly through gratuitous application of Messiah and Yoshitsune, but… whatever worked.

* * *

  
  


She’d almost forgotten how liberating it was, with just the two of them. No need to worry about the wrong person overhearing her side of the conversation, a straight path for the both of them… basically, none of the awkwardness that came about when trying to bring an invisible, intangible person through a crowd.

They’d figured out basic workarounds, of course, it had been half a year already, but it was nice to be able to take a walk and pretend to be normal the whole way through. Mostly.

Really, it wasn’t doing anything for Hamuko’s questions about her sanity, but she already knew she was unlikely to ever get an answer for that, so she could live with it.

“Oh, look!” She grinned, seeing what was ahead. “Properly dry land!”

“If that was really a problem for you, this entire floor would be ice,” Shinjiro pointed out. Which was true. But that also wasn’t the point. The point was that she wouldn’t have to even consider it, because the ground didn’t have a trace of water.

“Hey, I have some restraint!” She protested. “It’d be half ice at most.”

“Is that restraint, or magic cost?”

“Well, not all the floor is water,” She pointed out, ignoring the fact that it didn’t really answer his question. Mostly because they both already knew the answer to it. Restraint wasn’t one of her strong points.

Once her feet actually were on dry ground, Hamuko allowed herself to relax. Something about the wet bits just didn’t seem right. As much as anything in Yggdrasil could be right.

...Then again, she really didn’t have any room to talk there, did she?

Annoyance. “Hey, you’re drifting off again.” Right, still in the middle of a Labyrinth, maybe not the best place to let down her guard.

“Could be worse,” She tried to shrug it off. “I mean, this isn’t the worst place I could zone out. And it’s not like it’ll keep me from being able to fight, anyway. I-” The ground beneath her feet shifted, and she quickly moved to avoid falling as the vine creature in front of her assembled itself. “...Never mind. Your point has been made.”

Well, at least this situation was easy to resolve. All it would take was a swing of the naginata, and it would promptly stop bothering her, mostly due to being pieces on the ground. Nice and simple.

Before Hamuko could do that, however, two more vine monsters appeared from the underbrush. The first monster turned towards the other two, latching on to them with its vines.

As for what followed, well… suffice to say, it only confirmed that the laws of physics in the area were… flexible. “That… That’s not normally physically possible, is it? I may be a bit used to the Shadows...”

“I’m pretty sure it’s not,” Shinjiro stated. “But is that really what you should be focusing on?”

That… was probably a good point. Particularly when the resulting vine creature was as large as the trees that surrounded them, despite the fact that it only had three component parts, none of which were nearly a third that large. Physics and Yggdrasil clearly weren’t on speaking terms.

Still, it was just a bigger version of a previous enemy, and Hamuko knew how to deal with those. For a moment, she considered calling Yoshitsune, but decided that she was perfectly capable of dealing with the writhing mass using nothing but her naginata.

The number of vines being flung at her was enough to make her doubt that estimation, but she was already moving, and now was not the time to be losing momentum. She leapt over the nearby tendrils, slashing at those that got too close, seeing the pattern in the attacks and exploiting it.

If anyone were to ask Hamuko after the fact, she’d say that it worked up until she landed on a slick patch of mud and lost her footing. She flailed, grabbing for anything that could potentially break her fall and-

Vines. Not ropes, not chains, but still a binding that wrapped around her wrist and refused to let her move. More were quick to join, grabbing on to her limbs and keeping her from breaking free.

No movement meant no Evoker. No Evoker meant no Persona. Without a Persona, she wouldn’t be able to escape, and would once again be trapped without ever being able to move or talk to anyone or-

The colossal roper’s grip loosened, and Hamuko fell to the ground, gasping for breath. The landing hurt, but it also brought her more-or-less back to reality, so she counted it as a reasonably good thing. Even if the mortal dread was taking a bit longer to slip away.

Castor hit the vine-thing again, and Hamuko corrected herself- that wasn’t entirely her fear. A quick glance next to her showed Shinji shoving his Evoker into his pocket with more force than was strictly necessary, while trying not to look at it. Completely understandable.

“You didn’t have to do that…” She muttered, ignoring the plant-based carnage in front of them, and her own annoyance that her boyfriend was less solid than his Persona. “I would have broken out eventually.”

“Really?” He didn’t sound convinced.

“...I mean, Thanatos tends to show up once I get freaked out enough, even if he’s not my active Persona at the time. It’d work out.” A few years ago, and she would never have imagined herself saying that.

“...Yeah, no. Damnit, Kiseki… Don’t scare me like that.” Okay, if he was pulling out the (undeserved, incredibly embarrassing) pet name, he had to be worried. Hamuko decided that, from then on, she was handling strange vine things with fireballs. It’d be better for the both of them that way.

...And, looking at it, it’d probably be more merciful for the vines, too.

* * *

  
  


Even after the last traces of the monster that attacked Hamuko were pummeled into nothing, it took a few minutes for her and Shinjiro to calm down. Actual minutes- she’d counted.

Admittedly, she knew for a fact Shinji’d insist he hadn’t panicked, but she could feel his emotions, so it was sort of worthless for him to lie. And, because she knew these things, she didn’t have to actually say anything, so they didn’t need to go through all of that.

She still considered it. It’d be another act of a pretend normalcy that they’d never be able to have, but maybe this wasn’t the time. And if he didn’t want to play along, he’d just disappear again, and reading thoughts had never been part of her repertoire. No, it wasn’t worth it.

Instead, she simply glanced at the ground before saying, “Okay, let’s not do that again.”

“It’s not like that was my idea…”

“No, I mean, in general. Just… maybe we shouldn’t be doing things that give us flashbacks.” Which, in hindsight, seemed really obvious, but Hamuko had never claimed to be the most sensible person in the world.

“Please tell me you’re not just figuring this out.” The return of Shinji’s scathing tone was welcome- it meant that he’d actually be up for a proper conversation soon, rather than idle comments that made a sort of sense when strung together.

“I’m not that bad!”

“Hamuko, I clearly recall you trying to blast a barrier in Tartarus for no reason but to see if you could.”

“And yet, I was the one in charge of keeping everyone else in line… Okay, I think I see why we kept having problems with discipline.” Not that she’d ever claimed to be qualified to lead, she was just the best they had at the time. And that was scary for an entirely different reason.

Hamuko picked herself up off the ground. “Well, I think we’ve been in one place for too long. Come on, let’s go before more of them show up…. If there are anymore. This place really is too quiet.”

“What, this is a horror movie now?”

“...Honestly? If it were, I think we’d be the monster. Or maybe Rei-chan.”

“Not Zen?”

“Actually, Shinji, I think he’s the one who fits in here the best,” She noted. “The people here use magic like he does, at least. So his powers aren’t outlandish enough for these people, compared with his personality.”

“Of course you’re actually putting thought into this. This place doesn’t even have photography, Hamuko.”

“I mean, Souji-kun has his phone… might not have enough space on it for a full movie, though.” Of all the things for her to have forgotten… Not that she’d be able to get much use out of it even if she hadn’t, but, well, the point was there.

“I can’t help but think there are better things we could be doing,” Shinjiro sighed. “Like making sure nothing else sneaks up on us.”

Hamuko glanced around. No sign of any FOEs… or anything else dangerous. Or vines.

She didn’t think she’d be looking at vines the same way ever again, after this.

Still, if she let herself doubt now, she’d be right back where she started, and that wasn’t a very good mental place for her to be. “Why? It’s not like there’s anything to worry about.”

Shinji didn’t even bother giving a verbal response, simply sending her a wave of disbelief. “Really, it’s just-” He vanished, which he never did without warning, and the only reason she could think of for that to change was… “Vice Leader, are you spying on me?”

“Of course not!” Souji’s voice echoed from the forest around her, which only served to prove her point. Shrugging, she kept walking as she replied.

“Then why did you respond?”

“Because I was trying to warn you about something. It’s important.”

“You say that about everything.” Okay, so half the time he was just doing it to annoy her. But still!

“There’s FOEs in the water, and Shadows in the air. I’m not sure if you’ve come across anything on land-” She winced, because she’d actually have to answer that.

“Yeah, there’s these vines, you remember those, right? Well, those happened, but I’m fine now, so…” Honestly, she wasn’t sure who, exactly, she was trying to convince of that.

“I take it you handled them yourself? Well, that’s what I wanted to tell you. Don’t go in the water and you should be fine. And maybe look up every now and again.”

“So, just do what I’ve been doing? Got it. I’ll try and meet up with everyone sometime soon. See you then!” That was probably the closest Hamuko could get to hanging up telepathically, when she didn’t have a scanner-type Persona of her own. Still, Souji did seem to get the message, and that was probably the best she could hope for.

Once she was entirely sure the other Wild Card was gone, she sighed. “You know, Shinji, you’re allowed to let the others know you exist.”

“What’s it matter?” He asked, manifesting in front of her. “Most of them can’t even see me, and I’m not even sure about Zen.”

“Honestly, Zen-kun probably just doesn’t think it’s something he should bring up. Maybe. I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but emotions aren’t exactly his thing.”

“Yeah, I figured that. Still, when there’s only two people I can talk to…” Hamuko found herself wincing at that. Almost none of the current situation had been her intention, she’d just… wanted to keep Shinji close to her, and everything else came later. And then later had turned into never without her even getting the chance to think about it.

...Well, that wasn’t entirely true. There was one solution available to them, it just… didn’t come into play often. And she wasn’t going to force the matter, unless he seemed to be exceptionally miserable.

“I mean, technically, you can talk to anyone, it just has to go through me or Zen-kun first,” She pointed out, hoping that would mean something to him.

“Same basic thing. And who said I even wanted to talk to them?”

“Whatever you say…” She didn’t even try to hide her smile. “Really, though, I think it’d do you some good, to have other people.” And even if it didn’t, it meant there’d be less people who thought she was that kind of crazy. Maybe.

“I’m not sure you should be talking about that, you can’t even figure out what’s good for yourself.”

“...But that’s what I have you for.” She still didn’t know how, exactly, Shinji could blush without the assistance of things like a pulse, and she was probably never going to.

“...Moron.” But the warm feelings seeping through their link were enough for Hamuko to know how he really felt on the matter.

* * *

  
  


Eventually, the two of them came to… Hamuko would call it a beach, sort of. A small bit of sand, sloping down towards the water. No signs of life that she could see, and given the kinds of things that lived in the Labyrinth, that was probably a good thing.

All things considered, probably not the worst place in the world for a lunch break. Even if the lunch in question was a piece of bread and a fish. “We really need to divide up the food better…”

“No, you just need a way to cut down on Rei’s hoarding.”

“Is that even possible?”

“Theoretically. In practice… I think it might actually be dangerous to try. So don’t.”

“And since when has a little bit of danger ever stopped me?” She pointed out, in between bites of improv fish sandwich. “Really, Shinji, it’s Rei. She’s… not exactly the scariest person I know, especially after living with Mitsuru-senpai.”

“I’m actually more worried about Zen…” Hamuko paused to think about it. Okay, yeah, she could see why he was concerned there. She could probably win the former deity over with common sense and logical reasoning, but there was also the chance he would take Rei’s side on principle.

“Good point. I guess I’ll have to think about it a bit more…” She paused, glancing around at their surroundings. For the most part, they weren’t all that interesting, though some of the rocks had odd colors to them.

Which, if she thought about it, was probably entirely characteristic of Yggdrasil. At first glance, normal forest. At second glance… not so much. Still, she was interested, and that meant further observation was required.

Rocks could have all sorts of colors to them. Like the gems that used to save them in Tartarus, sparkling in all the colors of the rainbow, like the gold-orange stone Souji had brought back from the Labyrinth one day that glittered unusually brightly under the sun, like the blue-silver marble in her pocket that glowed softly even during the day, though it was brightest under the light of the moons.

It came to Hamuko’s mind that maybe she knew of more strange stones than she was expected to, but of all the consequences that living a life of adventure had given her, this one wasn’t half bad. An experience that was needed, as this particular stone, pale orange-brown and the size of her head, looked almost entirely normal.

Almost. A faint glimmer here, a spark there, a sheen that was far too smooth for such a rough surface, the subtle feeling of magic emanating from the center. The shimmer of light said it would be smooth, but when Hamuko ran her hand across it, that was enough to draw blood.

“Nobody else would see this, would they?” She asked, Sandalphon’s regenerative powers already working until the only sign she’d been wounded was a faint trace of red. “It’s not the sort of thing you’d be likely to notice, if you didn’t know where to look.”

“Translation for those of us who don’t have mystic powers?”

“I have no clue what its properties are other than that it isn’t entirely safe to touch and it’s where someone could kick it without thinking. I should probably do something about that.”

Shinjiro nodded. “Just… maybe don’t touch it directly this time?”

She pouted. Sometimes, it seemed like he didn’t have any faith in her intelligence.

“I know better than that.” She didn’t, sometimes, when her heart was pounding in her chest from fear as much as excitement, but Labyrinths were simple. Keep her eyes on the map, avoid the FOEs… it still wasn’t a recipe for a safe life, but she’d given up on having that long ago. Using a naginata to leverage a magical rock she didn’t want to touch into the nearby water wasn’t exactly rocket science.

Of course, she still misjudged something. Or maybe it was just her wanting to get the rock away from her, but in hindsight, no matter how easy or difficult moving the rock may have been, leaning on Yoshitsune to do so was clearly a bit much.

The boulder more or less flew from the beach and into the water, followed by the largest splash Hamuko had ever seen. She wasn’t sure whether the glimmering rainbow was a product of the rock’s magic or the local lighting, she just decided to be glad she saw it. It was a nice image.

The large crustacean that emerged from the water soon after, however, was not a very nice image at all. And after what happened earlier, maybe Personas still weren’t the best idea right now…

Hamuko scooped up her bag and made a dash through the forest.

* * *

  
  


Souji wasn’t entirely sure what had happened. He and his group of the Guild had managed to get through a particularly tricky maze of switches, and they found the stairs, only for Hamuko to come charging out of the bushes, followed by a crawfish FOE with a rather visible back injury.

He sighed, had Izanagi-no-Okami fry the monster with a Ziodyne, and decided to put whatever had happened out of mind. Something told him he’d stay saner that way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I actually put a good amount of thought as to how the mechanics of things like ghosts would work here, and it went into far more detail than I'd expected. Most of it is highly unlikely to ever come up... I say, but given that I plan on keeping up this rate of story progression... It may be useful.
> 
> The use of 'Kiseki' to refer to Hamuko dates, in-universe, to the post-apocalyptic stage here referred to as 'Thank fuck we still exist'. It is located immediately between the stages of 'What the hell is going on?' and 'Shit, now what?'
> 
> ...Really, though, this chapter was meant to show off the Hurt Crustacean, but then things happened.


	20. Dreams of the Sun

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With the fourth floor completed, the time to take on the fifth is not far off.
> 
> Nobody has ever returned from the fifth floor. In fact, most choose to use supernatural abilities to skip it. The Masked Guild does not agree with this.
> 
> That does not, however, mean that they are unwilling to procrastinate.

Seta Souji did not lie. He saw the truth in all things, cleared fog, and drew lines between what was real or not clear enough for the rest of the world to see. That was his purpose.

Dreams, though… Souji did dream. Those took a turn for the surreal when he first arrived in Inaba, and never quite returned to what he saw as normalcy. When his dreams were about reality… well, those were usually nightmares.

Some would call it luck that he wasn’t in the hospital with the others. In reality, he was quick on the draw with Salvation, as well as already having an unusually strong stomach from the sort of things he would find in the fridge. A little bit of poison just didn’t have what it would take to stop him anymore.

Dreams, though… given that his greatest powers all came from his head, he supposed he shouldn’t have been surprised those were his weaknesses. More than wind was, at least.

Shaking his head to get rid of his less enjoyable thoughts, Souji decided to go for a walk in town. Sure, it was the middle of the night, but he could see just fine, so it wasn’t like it would be as dangerous for him as it would anything else. And even if trouble did show up, most people had objections towards fighting dragons.

The ones that he knew didn’t were his guildmates, and he honestly didn’t think that any of them were entirely sane. So they didn’t really count.

It was a nice night, particularly for midwinter. A bit cold, even for a town that lived in Yggdrasil’s shadow, and there were occasional small patches of ice in the street. Not a lot of it- much of the local precipitation was caught in the tree’s branches, and was theorized to all go to the Labyrinth- but enough to be noticeable.

He wondered how many of the people here knew how incredible a tree like this was, even by the standards of someone who’d bested a goddess.

Not that he could ask. There was exactly one other person on the street right now, hardly enough for a full survey. “Lili. I didn’t expect to see you out this time of night.”

The Necromancer responded by muttering something under her breath that Souji couldn’t quite catch, but he thought it had something to do with a giraffe. Her second sentence was much more comprehensible. “It wasn’t exactly by choice.”

“The Labyrinth?”

“Among other things…” She sighed, before looking up at him. “What about you?”

“I felt like going for a walk.” Not a lie. She’d be able to figure out the truth if she looked for it, of course, but it was a sad fact of life that very few people ever tried to look for it. “It’s a nice night out.”

“It’s so foggy I can barely see you.” Right. He hadn’t noticed that. He needed to work on his situational awareness a bit more. Or figure out how to turn Izanagi-no-Okami’s powers off. He thought the first one might be more likely.

“My Persona gives me increased eyesight, so that sort of thing isn’t really a concern for me.” No reason to go into detail when she probably just wanted to go home.

“...What’s that like?” Lili asked, looking at him with undisguised curiosity. Souji wasn’t sure how much of it was natural relaxation and how much was her not realizing just how clear his vision was. He wasn’t going to ask. That would remove the magic. “Not the vision thing, really, just… having a Persona.”

“I’m not sure I can tell you what the normal experience is like,” He admitted. “Leader and I are very different from most Persona Users. It’s like if your instincts actually were a voice in your head. Like a person, who could try to betray you, but are doomed to failure because you are one and the same. Or something.”

“That sounds interesting. How do you get a Persona, anyway?” It couldn’t hurt to tell her a bit more. It wasn’t like she was likely to manage anything.

“It depends on the kind of person you are. Leader got her powers by facing Death, and throwing away her own fears. Yukiko had to face the darkest parts of herself. And I was gifted with this power by a higher being who wanted to use me as a game piece. Suffice to say, she’s not causing trouble anymore.”

Lili gave him an odd, awed look. He wasn’t sure why. Dealing with the affairs of deities was a simple fact of life.

...Okay, so maybe he was a bit jaded.

* * *

  
  


Planning an assault on a totally unknown place that swallowed up all who ventured into it was a very involved task. Food was made, arrows were purchased, medicines were bartered for. The Labyrinth in general required a clear head and proper supplies, but something like this needed extensive preparation.

Fortunately, Hamuko was well versed in the art of last-minute changes, starting to stock up weeks ahead of time, and compiling information from minimal sources. Budgeting less so, but she was getting better at that, albeit with Shinji’s help.

In addition, being someone whose escapades all took place late at night, she was entirely familiar with the symptoms of exhaustion. “Souji-kun, are you feeling okay? You look pretty tired.”

“It’s fine, Yuki-senpai,” He shrugged it off, and she mentally reminded herself to call him Vice Leader for the rest of the day. “Just a little trouble sleeping. I’ll be fine.”

“I’d be more convinced if you didn’t look like me during my year with SEES.”

“That’s not a good thing,” Yukiko agreed, far too quickly for Hamuko’s enjoyment. It wasn’t that bad, she still managed to make it through the year- top of her class, even! The biggest potential issue was potentially having to put off their big expedition while Souji recovered from illness, and it wasn’t like they had a time limit here, so they could afford to do that.

“Really, it’s not like we’re going into the Labyrinth right away…” Souji muttered. “Really, Yukiko, by the time we go there, I’ll have more than enough energy.”

“From being rested or unhealthy food?”

“I’m not sure you have room to talk about the second one…”

On the other side of the table, Zen finished his breakfast and stood up, nudging away a cat that ventured a bit too close to him. As he walked away, Shinjiro appeared. “Hey, do you mind if I…?”

Hamuko waved him forward, sending him as many feelings of encouragement as she could. Fifteen meters wasn’t very far, but it’d be more than enough, so long as Rei was nearby and they were planning to go to Yggdrasil. Nobody would dare wander away when they were in the middle of prep work for Yggdrasil, that was just asking to lose out on a share of the supplies.

And it wasn’t like she’d be fully alone, either. Souji, Rei, and Yukiko were more than enough company, particularly for time spent on plotting. So, no, she wasn’t lonely. Not really.

Turning to the others, she continued, “So, Vice Leader’s lack of sleep aside…”

* * *

  
  


It was amazing, what a person could get used to. Helltowers, brain-eating monsters, time travel… and now a giant tree. With an interior setting that happened to be somewhat familiar.

Shinjiro was pretty sure that, when all the unusual stuff started repeating itself under a different premise, it was a sign that things had gotten just a bit too weird. The existence of Zeus almost gave an explanation, but he wasn’t the one that normally thought about things like that. He was more than happy to leave that to Hamuko.

Or Zen. Who, come to think of it, was probably the most qualified person there to deal with deities and magical physics. Even if it was easy to forget at times.

Times such as now, when he was rubbing at his temple and trying to ignore the cats that gathered around him. Shinjiro supposed that, for most bystanders, it must make an amusing picture. “You feeling okay?”

“...It’s fine. Just a slight headache.”

“I didn’t realize you got those.”

“I didn’t.” Okay, mildly alarming, and maybe he shouldn’t get on Zen’s case for ignoring him just yet. “Since arriving in this world… something has changed.”

“You mean besides the obvious?” Because, really, was anything the same anymore? The six of them had more or less remained themselves, but that was mostly due to their abilities translating well to the situation. Otherwise, they might not have all met up again, because what was the point of travel without something interesting to find?

...At least, that was how Hamuko put it. And between the two of them, she was the one who had actually traveled before the whole thing started, so she would know.

“I might have worded that better, yes,” Zen admitted. “None of our natures have been fundamentally altered, and yet our integration with this world has been almost seamless… for the most part, anyway.”

“I thought that was just the open invitation.”

“It could have been. It was never my job to learn how these things worked, and then I just didn’t have the time.” Shinjiro considered pointing out that months-long card games weren’t exactly conducive to catching up on a decade’s worth of backlog, but decided that it wasn’t worth it. Particularly when that had pretty clearly been the whole point of it to begin with.

“Is that why you’ve been ignoring me?”

“I have been doing nothing of the sort.”

“It’s been five months, this is the first time we’ve actually spoken.” Right. Zen had no social skills. Not that he could talk there, but at least he wasn’t usually in a position to interact with people who weren’t Hamuko anymore, so it didn’t matter as much. “Or that you’ve directly acknowledged that I exist. People don’t usually do that.”

“I will take that into consideration.” Probably the most he was going to get at the moment. More than he would have gotten from some people.

There was a crash from the general eating area. “...You think we should check in on that?”

“Most likely.”

Right. That was what he’d been afraid of.

* * *

  
  


Hamuko, looking at the sticky mess on the ground that was the remainder of the honeypot, wondered if Jenetta would learn from this not to keep so many cats- or at least to be more careful of her steps when they were around.

“I’ll have to go to the Labyrinth for more…” The Therian girl sighed. “Maybe I should listen to my sisters and just get a hive…”

“Do you go into the Labyrinth like this a lot?” Souji asked.

“Why, yes! That’s where all of the best ingredients are, after all. Though… the hives and stuff are all in Owl Beast territory. So I should ask for a proper escort, but Mirina always charges too much up front to leave money for the Guilds…”

“We’ll escort you,” Hamuko volunteered. She wasn’t entirely sure why she did it, but figured that was just the natural evolution of her desire to help people. And go on adventures, but that part was starting to seem less important. Having the less-pleasant results of her last adventure thrown back at her via gigantic vine monster would do that.

Souji sighed. “Just like that? I’m not sure you’re giving this proper consideration.”

“It’s the third floor, there’s enough of us for decoys and such, and we could probably sedate the hive pretty easily if there’s enough flammable stuff around.” Which there should have been, Yggdrasil being a giant forest and all. Otherwise, there was a problem. “Should be simple enough.”

“Besides, honey is sticky and tasty,” Rei added, giving a longing look at the puddle on the floor.

Hamuko was pretty sure there was nothing to worry about there. If the fact that the honey was on the floor and being licked at by cats didn’t deter her, the presence of shards in the gooey mess would.

“Also that. I could probably make candies from some of the things in the Labyrinths, actually…” Something she was actually good at, without having to ask advice from others.

“I don’t think you should encourage her, she’s bad enough as it is,” Yukiko pointed out. Hamuko didn’t think that either of them were really allowed to say that, but whatever.

“Yeah, that’s a pretty good point.” She tried not to show visible relief at Shinji coming back, along with Zen. It would probably confuse people. They couldn’t see him, after all. “Though I’m not sure… is she talking about Rei or you?” Okay, maybe glaring at empty air wasn’t any more subtle, but it made her feel better.

“Oh, Zen, you’re back,” She finally stated. “We’re going to the third floor with Jenetta today, if that’s alright with you?”

Zen offered no protests. For the moment, at least, he was her new favorite Guild member.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...It probably says a lot that, with how I'm writing, Zen and Rei actually seem to be the least codependent couple in the Guild. None of it good.


	21. Bears of a Feather

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hunting down hives for honey? Simple.
> 
> Doing so in Owl Beast territory? Less simple.
> 
> Does it stop anyone? Of course not.

The third floor of Yggdrasil, if one ignored the creatures that were a mix of avian and ursine traits, was a generally peaceful place. Something similar was true for the Labyrinth as a whole, actually, aside from maybe the floors that nobody ever came back from.

Either way, it was a nice day in the mysteriously sky-filled land within the world tree, where a group of people were talking. Each of them enjoying the peaceful day, each of them with their own reasons for being there which were similar, but never fully coincided.

“The best hives to get honey from are this way,” Jenetta instructed the people trailing behind her. “The closest to the center, the better!”

“I can’t help but think this is going to be trouble,” Souji groaned. “Yuki-senpai, do you have any ideas for how to handle this, yet?”

“I’m always open to suggestions,” Hamuko replied. “Though, some of them I’ll have to discard out of hand… fifteen meters doesn’t make for much of a safe zone.”

“...Why fifteen meters?”

“It doesn’t matter,” The Guild leader sighed, shaking her head. “I was just talking to myself.”

“We would need a proper amount space for our usual magic use,” Zen agreed. “Particularly if the FOEs prefer to fight in close quarters.”

“They probably do,” Souji commented. “Given those claws… we should try and stay away from them.”

“At least one of us will have to stay near Jenetta, right?” Yukiko checked.

“...I think Leader should do it,” Rei said. “She’d be really good at it! Or, at least…”

Hamuko turned to Zen, a question in her eyes. Zen shook his head. She sighed and turned her attention back towards the map.

“We’re getting pretty close to Owl Beast territory. Jenetta, are we almost there?”

“Yep! It’s just a few clearings away!”

* * *

  
  


Close to the clearing where they would be risking an FOE encounter, the group was stopped by one of the guards. “You don’t want to go that way,” He warned them.

“Actually, we do!” Jenetta corrected. “We’re here to get some honey!”

“...No, really, you don’t want to go that way.” The guard leaned back on his spear, taking in the six people that were visible to him. Hamuko and Rei fidgeted under his gaze a little, but they all managed to keep their composure. “You know it’s nesting season for the bears, right?”

“...Isn’t the honey thing a stereotype?” Yukiko mused. “Teddie doesn’t like it. Says it makes his fur all sticky.” Immediately after she said that, her face fell.

After everything Zen’s friends had gone through, he was amazed they were still functional. Relatively. But it would probably be better if they didn’t bring up their own triggers.

Maybe. At no point would he ever claim to be qualified to deal with mental health. The last time he tried that, he’d ended up losing a decade and a good portion of his powers.

Rei was well worth it, in his opinion, but the backlog had been enormous. And while odds were it wouldn’t happen again, he’d still rather not risk it.

Souji sighed. “I’m not sure you noticed, but he wasn’t exactly your average bear… no matter how much he insisted. And we don’t entirely know what the bears here are like.”

The guard was now looking at them like they were insane. Zen couldn’t blame him. Still, being thought of as a Guild whose members had snapped long ago probably wasn’t what they wanted.

“Teddie was a very… unconventional friend from their hometown,” He quickly spoke up. “His heart was in the right place, but his mind would be considered strange by anyone who didn’t know him.”

“Did we ever figure out what he was made of, exactly?” Shinjiro asked. “I mean, Shadows are emotions and stuff, right?”

“Strange is a bit of an understatement…” Hamuko didn’t give the phantom beside her so much as a glance. “I’d swear he was made of pure happiness or something. Or maybe someone else’s abandonment issues.”

Souji nodded. “The second one. Definitely. Though I guess it doesn’t really matter anymore… it’s not like we’ll see him again.”

“Either way, this is no time for moping around!” Jenetta declared. “Those bears are scary, but I’m sure we can get by them without any trouble!”

“Yeah!” Rei nodded, a gleeful grin on her face. Zen wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not. “We’re gonna get lots of honey!”

“We also have an actual plan,” Souji added. “That should probably help.”

“One would hope…” Hamuko groaned. “I mean… we know enough about fighting these kinds of enemies to get by, at least.”

“...I suppose there’s no way to convince you?” The guard asked, clearly hoping to make them reconsider their life choices.

Like there had ever been any choice for them to avoid the Labyrinth in the first place.

It was only natural that the guard would fail to convince them, and that they would continue forward. But perhaps it was worth considering what would have happened otherwise.

Not that it was Zen’s job to think of these things anymore. And that was just the way he liked it.

* * *

  
  


The Owl Beast they saw… well, it didn’t actually notice them at first. There was a hive nearby, and a field of flowers, and a birdlike creature curled up in the clearing, like it was trying to get to sleep.

Hamuko could empathize with it. She’d had her fair share of sleepless nights, and was actually inclined to leave this monster alone. She could just sedate the bees with smoke from a fire spell, and then cut the hive down with her naginata. Simple.

And then Jenetta had to go and ruin it. “Excuse me, Mrs. Bearenstein!” She called out, walking up to the dozing creature.

“What is she even doing?” Shinji asked. Hamuko gave a small shrug, sure that nobody would notice it. It wasn’t like she was unused to people completely lacking a sense of self-preservation, after all.

Not that she’d say that out loud, even if they were alone. Some things just didn’t need bringing up.

“...I think we just lost our plan,” Rei commented, already reaching for an arrow. Probably a good idea. If only because Hamuko didn’t think she could get away with simply throwing a Megidolaon at this one.

The bear began to stir, growling a little. Jenetta didn’t seem to notice. “I know you’re probably worried about getting food for your cub-chicks and all, but I really need some honey. So, if you don’t mind, my friends and I will take this hive and be on our way, okay?”

“Any ideas what Personas we should be using, Yuki-senpai?” Souji asked.

“We shouldn’t need anything more than Orpheus or Izanagi. Well… unless it has a nest nearby. And we should probably assume that it does.” Agidyne was a good spell, even if she only put in the effort to obtain it after she no longer had a choice in the matter, but she preferred the ability to target weaknesses when it came to these types of threats. “Just… throw anything at it that you need to.”

“Keep doing what I’ve been doing, got it.” She’d laugh, if the situation were less serious. She was pretty sure that was what he was going for.

A few seconds later, the FOE lashed out, and that was when the battle began in earnest.

* * *

  
  


Jenetta… wasn’t entirely sure what was happening, to be honest.

She knew how it had started. With a smashed honeypot, and an offer of help, freely given, that she’d had no reason to refuse. And there had been planning, she clearly remembered that there had been a plan.

A plan which she’d… sort of ruined, huh? And Mrs. Bearenstein didn’t seem too amused by that.

Her sisters always told her that she wasn’t careful enough in the Labyrinth, that she wasn’t the kind of person who survived in there. Survived, not anything else, because the type of person who thrived in such a place was such a rare breed as to be practically nonexistent.

Or, well, they should have been nonexistent. The bear’s strike flew off oddly to the side from Jenetta, and suddenly there was a hand wrapped around her wrist.

“Come on, we can’t stay here,” Hamuko urged her, pulling her back towards the others. Souji already had Izanagi out, and Yukiko had summoned her own Persona. Jenetta nodded, stumbling along and wondering just why everyone else was so sure of themselves, that this situation didn’t unnerve them at all.

Wishing that she could be just like that.

As soon as they were out of the immediate line of fire, Hamuko produced a pistol. Not a type of weapon commonly used on anything stronger than an air squirrel, there probably wasn’t anything it could do to such an impressive beast.

Not that it ended up facing the monster. Instead, the most-likely-Earthlain girl pointed it to her own temple, and fired.

“Alilat!”

The world became ice. Ice, and a bird-bear being knocked away easily, and an odd geometric figure floating behind Hamuko, who was standing as though shooting herself in the head was normal.

So maybe there were people who thrived in the Labyrinth, after all. Jenetta wondered what it would take for her to become one of them.

Was it limited to people with Personas, and those closest to them? Or was it something she could someday attain?

If it were the latter… if, one day, Jenetta could leap through the tides of battle, not a single attack by the opponent hitting its targets… then she wanted to know what it was like.

...She guessed she was becoming an adventurer, then.

* * *

  
  


A snowball here, an icicle there… Hamuko supposed she should have found it alarming, that the only real difference she saw between the FOE and the Shadows was that one of them bled black.

At the very least, the part of her that was Orpheus found it somewhat concerning. The part of her that was Thanatos was enjoying the spectacle a bit too much to be bothered. There was a reason she still didn’t listen to that part too much.

Not that it mattered. At the moment, her true Personas had little bearing on how things were going. “Vice Leader, I could use a little help!” She called.

Ice seemed to work on the creature, and while she was sure Zen could handle things well enough, she felt a bit more secure in the presence of the other Wild Card. Mostly because Souji didn’t have to worry for the safety of someone without magic.

Not that she was much better. She winced the next time the claws came down, though she knew they’d never make contact, and pretended that the slight magical tug of a triggered Safeguard wasn’t the scariest thing for her to have to deal with.

That, fortunately, was the last time she’d have to deal with it that day, as that was when Souji and Zen blasted the Owl Beast with the combined force of their ice magics. “All of us at once?” The silver-haired Fool suggested. Hamuko couldn’t help but nod. It wouldn’t be the first time they’d combined their powers like that.

“Good idea. Zen-kun?”

“I will follow your orders.”

“Right. Once it gets up, everyone.” No better way to ensure that their attacks would all hit. It would be better for Yukiko if they avoided lowering the temperature too much, especially when it was already midwinter.

It only took a few more seconds. A glare from the powerful creature, a mental command to Alilat, and the other two moving at the exact same time.

It came to mind that maybe, if they could move so in-sync with each other, they were getting into too many larger battles, but Hamuko dismissed those thoughts. Two-thirds of them were Persona Users, getting into life-or-death battles was just what they did. The Shadows wouldn’t let them act in any other way.

When there weren’t Shadows around, like now… well, at least this was an adventure they’d properly chosen for themselves.

Once the bear was properly dealt with, proper attention could be paid to Jenetta. “So, I hope you understood what you did wrong?”

The innkeeper nodded, her ears flopping about with the motions. “Y-yeah… I shouldn’t do this kind of thing. I’m not strong enough yet.”

Rei walked up to her. “Yet?”

“Y-yeah!” A more forceful nod, this time. Hamuko wondered if her ears didn’t hurt, constantly flying about like that. Well. Not her problem. “I’ve decided! I’m going to become an adventurer, just like all of you!”

“Are you sure?” Souji asked, dismissing Black Frost. “This isn’t a life to be taken lightly, you know.”

“I know. To be honest, I… I always wondered what it was like, to explore the Labyrinth like this. And… it’s actually really fun! So… I’m going to practice, and get stronger, and come back as a real adventurer!”

Well. At the very least, it wasn’t like anyone here could fault her resolve without being hypocritical. None of the Persona Users, at least, and Hamuko had plenty of examples that included Zen and Rei, as well.

All they’d be able to do was wish her luck.

* * *

  
  


Well. This was it. No more procrastinating.

They’d taken Jenetta back to the inn, and helped her set up the hive to attract more bees. They’d sharpened their weapons, where applicable, to the finest point possible without lowering performance. They’d even checked to make sure they had enough food for a week in the Labyrinth, though they were all sure that they wouldn’t be in there for that long.

It was a good way to prepare for any stress-eating Rei might do, anyway.

Now, the Masked Guild stepped off of the stairs and onto the fifth floor, venturing just beyond the first row of trees.

Almost immediately, and odd, shimmering barrier came into existence, enclosing them within the Labyrinth.

Well. This would probably turn out to be interesting.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rei is more perceptive than most people give her credit for. Probably due to all her food-based issues, and the fact that everyone is currently enabling her. Or maybe Hamuko's just less subtle than she thinks it is. Probably both.
> 
> I realized a long time ago that Teddie has to be made out of either positive emotions(Taking what he told Marie completely serious) or loneliness(his entire character, really). Either way, he is a good bear that should be hugged.
> 
> Jenetta probably shouldn't be using these people as a benchmark. They sort of defy nature a lot of the time.


	22. The Pursuing Dread Attacks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ...Or, well, it tries to. It doesn't exactly get that far.

“...I guess this is why nobody’s ever come back from here.” Souji stated, looking up at the giant wall of magical light.

“There does seem to be no way back to Iorys for now,” Zen agreed. “The magic in the air is interfering with the local Geomagnetics too much for me to get a grasp on them.”

Yukiko sighed. “I guess this means… all we can do is just go on ahead.”

“And?” Everyone turned to Hamuko. “Look, we’re all a bit used to being able to teleport back to the entrance of wherever we are. But we’re more than a match for anything here that’s not an FOE… and just about all of those, as well. So long as we don’t let anything surprise us, we should be able to get through this.”

Souji rolled his eyes. “Yeah, and I’m sure that’s what all those other adventurers said. We might be strong, but...”

“We’re strong enough to fight gods.” She wasn’t sure why they kept forgetting that. For being part of a group of Persona Users, it seemed to be a rite of passage.

Admittedly, her experience might have been a bit skewed given the large number of gods that had been relatively active around her and Souji, but the point still stood. And besides, two gods coming into conflict was basically the entire reason they were even there. One of them was even in their Guild. It wasn’t something the others should have been forgetting.

“What about Rei?”

“Hey, I can fight too, you know!” The girl complained, waving an arrow around. “What do you think this is for?”

“Rei, please stop before you remove someone’s eyes with that.” Zen carefully reached out and plucked the arrow from her hand.

“But Zen-!”

“If you cannot be responsible with your weapon, then you may not use it. Is that fair enough, Leader?”

Hamuko tried not to look too relieved. “Y-yeah, basically… Though she’s got more arrows than that… and you might still want to give it back before one of those Venus Eagles you told me about shows up here…” No reason to have any of them defenseless.

Particularly when this leg of the adventure had only just begun.

* * *

  
  


While the fifth floor was nowhere near as wet as the fourth floor had been- not that that was difficult, but still- Souji was glad to hear the familiar sounds of a river.

Even if he didn’t need Kaguya to tell him that it was unsafe, with the large number of giant crawfish swimming within.

“I guess that means we’re not having fish…” Rei groaned.

“I don’t know. An electric trap would probably help,” Yukiko commented. “...Or it’d just make them angry, one of those…”

“Let’s not risk it,” Hamuko sighed. “We have enough food as it is, so long as we remember to hunt and forage.” Souji was surprised she’d decided on that so quickly. It wasn’t like their leader was a stranger to taking unnecessary risks. “...And so long as Rei-chan doesn’t touch the food bags.”

“That’s not fair,” The youngest of the girls complained.

“Well, if you’d stop binge-eating, maybe we could occasionally afford groceries.” Those words were a bit more scathing than Souji would have expected of her, but then, he would also have enjoyed a lunch that wasn’t basically tasteless.

“I don’t think she’s going to stop,” He remarked. Like he needed to actually say it. “You should know this by now. I mean, you’ve known her longer than I have.”

“Arguably,” She shrugged. “I mean, you’ve got a few months on the road together that I don’t have. Really, I’m pretty sure I’m only the leader here out of habit…” Well… she wasn’t wrong, but he wasn’t going to be the one to tell her that.

Particularly when they had more important things to worry about. Like the splashing sounds of various crustaceans getting nearer to their side of the river.

There were a few things this made him think about, but… they could wait for later.

* * *

  
  


“So, I’ve been wondering something…” The five of them were hiding in a thicket, waiting for the giant blue centipede to wander by them. If it ever did. Souji wasn’t too sure about that at the moment.

“What is it?” Hamuko asked. Souji pretended not to notice just how many new wrinkles were in her sleeves now- how she could both mess with them and hold a naginata was something that he’d never be able to understand.

“Back then, when my team got back to our own time…” He pushed away thoughts of the others. No. They wouldn’t help right now. “None of us remembered meeting you until Amada reminded us. But he had to remember from somewhere. And… it shouldn’t have been possible.”

“I would like to hear about this as well,” Zen added. Hamuko shrugged.

“Well, it’s just… I’d noticed something was off, of course- I mean, I had a different Persona than when I’d gone to sleep the night before, and that’s not the sort of thing that’s easy to overlook, even if I am a Wild Card. So I went to the Velvet Room, and Theo reminded me. And then I reminded everyone else, because communication is important.”

On her last sentence, her fingers tightened around her left wrist and she glared at empty air. Souji wasn’t even going to pretend to know what was going on there, except that his leader might not have been entirely sane.

Not that any of them were. But at least most of them were less obvious about it.

“...I don’t think it’s going to move,” Yukiko sighed, watching the light blue FOE refuse to move away from the middle of the path.

“I wish it would,” Rei added. “There’s nothing to do here. And that tree’s covered in apples. I want to try one, but it just won’t budge.”

“...Give it a few moments,” Hamuko stated. Before Souji could ask what she meant, she’d already vanished into the underbrush.

“What’s she doing?” Rei voiced his question before he could.

“Well, clearly, she thinks she has uncovered a solution,” Zen replied, his face and voice betraying nothing. “I believe we should pay more attention to the FOE.”

Given that Zen had spent more time around FOEs than the rest of them, Souji was willing to take his word for it. He turned his attention back to the giant blue insect.

A few seconds later, a giant stone wall emerged from the path, launching the Toxipede into the sky before sinking back into the ground. Hamuko was quick to return, her eyes sparkling.

“Wow, I didn’t expect that to work so well!” Was her remark as she peered into the sky. “I can’t even see it anymore!”

“...When do you think it will come down?” Yukiko asked. Nobody had a really good answer to that.

They never got to see it come down, anyway.

* * *

  
  


“Rei-chan, please, we don’t know how long we’ll be here. Stop eating from the supply bags.” Sure they could hunt, and forage, and fish if they found any safe water, but it was the principle of the thing. And the fact that none of them knew how to make bread over a campfire.

“But it’s so tasty!”

Hamuko sighed. It wasn’t the first time they’d had this argument. Probably wouldn’t be the last. Even if it were, odds were it wouldn’t be because of starvation.

But she was the leader, and, like always, it was her job as the leader to instill discipline and-

Okay, she couldn’t even think that with a straight face. Discipline did not exist in the Masked Guild.

It hadn’t really existed in SEES, either. Probably had something to do with how both groups were made up of utterly dysfunctional teenagers.

“If she eats all the food, we can always send her hunting,” Yukiko suggested. Probably a good idea. Rei would get more practice with her bow, and the rest of them would still get to eat.

“Wouldn’t that be dangerous?” Zen pointed out.

“If you didn’t want her to be in danger, you shouldn’t have let her come to Yggdrasil. It might not be entirely out to get you like some places, but-” As if to prove her point, a golden hand leaped out of the underbrush. Without pausing to think on why it was there, she summoned Yoshitsune to put it down. “...Well. That. Help me gather up all the gold. Once we get back to Iorys, we can have a nice meal or something. Rei-chan’s only invited if she stops eating from the supply bags.”

The small girl seemed torn. “So I can have lots of food now… or some really good food later… Zen, what do you think?”

“You should do what you like.”

“But I don’t know what that is!”

Like a lot of conversations, this one was ended by the appearance of an FOE. More specifically, them walking in front of an old stone wall which crumbled and revealed an Owl Beast.

Hamuko had so many questions about how that even got there, but now wasn’t the time for that. Now was the time to run and hopefully find a door they could slam in the bear’s face.

It said a lot that this was a thing that regularly occurred.

* * *

  
  


When the sun was low in the sky, the group found a nice place to set up camp. It was a small clearing with a single tree of moon apples in the middle, close enough to the river to get water, but far enough to avoid the attention of any wandering crustaceans.

“Looks a bit too good to be true, to me,” Shinji commented. “Like something out of one of those storybooks.”

Hamuko didn’t reply, mostly because they were with the others. Still, she didn’t see any signs of danger, and that was better than the entire Labyrinth floor so far, so she wasn’t sure she had much of a choice here.

“I think we should stay here for the night,” She said, because it wasn’t like there were a lot of better options… or visible other options at all. “Rei-chan, the two of us should see if we can’t hunt any sort of edible creature while the others set up camp- I want our trail rations to last as long as possible.” It went without saying that, while she was currently behaving herself, Hamuko didn’t trust Rei with the food bags.

“Are you sure you’ll be fine with just the two of you?” Souji asked.

“I’m not going to charge into any situation that I’m not sure I can get myself out of.” No more vines. Exploring the unknown was a lot more fun when she could be sure of a safe escape route.

“Yuki-senpai, it’s not you that I’m worried about.” Okay, that was fair. Rei was as good in a fight as an average adventurer that had reached this floor, but compared to the rest of them, that seemed pretty insignificant.

Rei herself, however, didn’t seem to agree, if the hints of gold in her gaze were anything to go by. Probably best to defuse this situation before it could explode.

“Well, Rei-chan’s not going to get any better at this whole business if she doesn’t have the chance to practice, now is she?”

Honestly, Hamuko was pretty sure that the only reason the other half of the Guild agreed was because they didn’t want to handle her kills. So she’d gone a bit overboard in beheading a boar one time, it wasn’t like any of them were strangers to gore... even if it tended to melt away before very long had passed.

An eagle Shadow swooped down at her as she led her group out of the clearing. She cut its wings off without a second thought.

* * *

  
  


“Um, leader? I was sort of wondering something…” Rei wasn’t meeting her gaze, but Hamuko didn’t think that was necessarily a bad sign. Particularly given that the other girl was weighed down by the corpses of a number of carnivorous rabbits.

“What is it, Rei-chan?” Hopefully it was something she could actually answer.

“I’ve been thinking… About earlier, when you noticed the rabbits. And the switch, and… you couldn’t have seen any of them, could you? There was just forest…” That was entirely true, though it helped to have the assistance of a second pair of eyes that could just walk through nearby obstacles.

“Well, we were following rabbit tracks,” She pointed out, ignoring the second part entirely.

“I know that part!” Rei gestured at the well-traveled rabbit path. In most places, it wasn’t quite big enough for a pair of humans, but they managed well enough. “But… those things, and all the attacks that should hit you, but don’t… it’s like there’s something protecting you.”

Hamuko winced, and put a bit more attention to tucking her sleeve around her watch. It seemed to almost be working, there just wasn’t enough space. “Really?”

A nod. “Y-yeah. And it made me think about… how I didn’t go to visit you, right before everything started falling apart. But Shin-chan did, and Zen left him there, so… he’s here, isn’t he?”

“Of all the people to figure it out…” Shinjiro grumbled. “...Tell her, I wouldn’t put it past Zen to find a way to physically hurt me if she asked.”

Hamuko didn’t, either. Mostly because Zen did anything Rei asked of him, if it seemed vaguely reasonable. Including that one time that got them run out of a nice port town where they could actually buy things like chocolate and sugar, but she wasn’t about to restart that old argument.

So, instead, she just nodded. “You can’t tell anyone else until they figure it out themselves, though. Or if Shinji says it’s okay, but I don’t think that’s happening. He doesn’t really do people.”

“I know. He’s like a prickly porcupine, isn’t he?”

“Oh, not this again…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That poor Toxipede. Does anyone know if there happens to be a floor that overlaps 5F? That might be important later...


End file.
